Trollhunter was outstanding. Appreciated that it was “found footage” but without the “Blair Witch”-y camerawork. Very effective use of simple special effects.
Came here to mention a comedy/horror movie called Dave Made a Maze, about a guy who builds a cardboard “maze” that’s “bigger on the inside” a la Dr. Who. Dave’s wife and friends enter the maze to find him, as he has become lost within his own creation, and strange misadventures ensue. I think it’s still on Netflix.
A special genre of ones from the 80-90s teen movies worth a shot, I still love all of these:
Real Genius - Geekdom and clever kids rebelling. If it wasn’t for Top Secret this would be Val Kilmers best role. Excellent movie. IT crowd stole the man who lives in wardrobe joke though.
Pump up the volume - Isolation and alone in a new town, more rebellion ensues as quiet kid sets up pirate radio station and gets the kids all riled up. Christian Slater in there after Heathers.
Dream a little dream - Body swap movie, who’s fashion has dated but, the music lives on. Only Corey Haim and Feldman movie I’ve liked, but still wince as someone dresses like Michael Jackson to be cool. Young kid swaps with an old dude, done to death, but done well here before it was.
Others:
The worlds greatest dad - Robin Williams greatest role, and a film directed by Bobcat Goldthait, who’s always different. A fathers idiot son gets himself killed, and he honours his memory by making out the idiot kid was a great lost poet to the world.
Prelude to a kiss - Another body swap. The quirky wife (Meg Ryan) switches bodies on her wedding day leaving the husband (Alec Baldwin) lost and confused as to who he actually married.
I’m sure I’ve got loads more, but would have to go and remember them.
Thanks, I’ll check it out. I wonder what would happen to him if, instead, they just tore the thing down from the outside instead of entering it to search for him.
Jesus of Montreal. A Catholic parish priest updates the annual Passion Play by hiring secular actors, who take the premise and go strange places with it. The actor cast as Jesus, Lothaire Bluteau, is the amazing anchor of the film. Both comic and tragic. In French, won a bunch of awards when it came out in 1989, including at Cannes.
The Man from Earth. A university professor throws himself a going-away party, and his secret past is revealed to his friends.
You just made me think of the underrated Shakes the Clown, quite possibly the best movie about alcoholic clowns, and their longstanding animus towards mimes.
Ah yes, I did think I’d mention it, but I think it could be a little more well known nowadays. As the trailer puts it:
“The citizen kane of alcoholic clown movies”.
Several of the lesser-known films I love are in here. Here are a few others, many of them older ones:
Five Million Years to Earth/Quatermass and the Pit – The American title looks like a deliberate effort to confuse it with Ray Harryhausen’s Fifty Million Miles to Earth. Excelent adaptation of the BBC TV serial Quatermass and the Pit, with Andrew Keir playing Quatermass and convincing you he’s really a British aerospace scientist (in place of Brian Donleavy in the first two films, who looks and sounds like an American gangster). An alien artifact is dug up while they’re working on a London Underground station, and it causes havoc, just like in that other film released the same year (1968), 2001. Some very clever ideas in this one.
The Lost Missile – another film made from Jerome Bixby’s screenplays (like The Man from Earth, cited above, and the Alien-influencing It! The Terror from Beyond Space). This one concerns an atomic missile launched by a hostile foreign power (Russia, obviously), that gets out of control and wreaks havoc. The nations of earth try to destroy it before it can do more harm.From 1958. Probably his most obscure film.
Creator – (1985) Peter O’Toole stars as a Nobel laureate at a (California?) University who is trying to clone his deceased wife. Not at all what you would think from the description. It’s witty and well-written, and also stars Mariel Hemingway, David Ogden Stiers, Virginia Madsen, and Vincent Spano. Screenplay by Jeremy Leven, based on his 1980 novel of the same name.
Dersu Uzala --(1975) Japanese director Akira Kurasawa (The Seven Samurai, Yojhimbo, Rashomon, fer cryin’ out loud!) was down on his luck and couldn’t get funding in Japan for his films (his previous film had flopped). He got funding from Daiei film (The guys who made the Gamera movies and Russian state film company Mosfilm to make this film about a wise and wily Siberian hunter, based on a 1923 memoir.
It’s not really an obscure film, because it won a bunch of awards, including the Academy Award for best foreign language film, but I’m sure it’s not well known among people who aren’t film aficionados. It’s Kurasawa’s only non-Japanese language film. I’m sure it’s what encouraged Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas (who admittedly lifted elements from Kurasawa’s The Hidden Fortress for Star Wars) to fund Kurasawa’ big Japanese comeback film, Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior
YES! When I read that Black Robe was recommended, I immediately thought of that scene. Mind-blowing, indeed.
The Third Miracle, mentioned in the Anne Heche thread. It helps if you are (or were) Catholic, but Ed Harris and Anne H. are great in this one whatever your religion or lack of. It’s available right now for free on Tubi.
Duck You Sucker, also known by the title A Fistful of Dynamite, is an oddball little 1971 movie directed by Sergio Leone.
Packed with sticks of dynamite, Irish rebel and explosives expert John H. Mallory [James Coburn] finds himself in Revolution-torn 1913 Mexico, on the run from the British government. Riding a dusty, V-twin Indian motorcycle, John crosses paths with short-fused Mexican bandit Juan Miranda [Rod Steiger] and his gun-toting family of outlaws, and before long, his expertise in explosives becomes evident.
Speaking of oddball, there’s this 2007 Chinese movie, Lust, Caution, which I’m not even going to try to explain. Here’s what Roger Ebert had to say (he gave it 3 stars):
Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution” is first languid, then passionate, as it tells the story of a young woman who joins a political murder plot and then becomes emotionally involved with her enemy. It begins at a 1942 Mah-Jongg game in Hong Kong, when erotic undertones become clearly audible to us, and then flashes back to Shanghai, 1938, during the Japanese occupation of China. One of the rich ladies at the game table is revealed to have been a college student, and not really the wife of a wealthy (but unseen) tycoon.
The underlying plot gradually reveals itself. Too gradually, some will believe, unless the languor is necessary to create the hothouse atmosphere that survives in the midst of war.
…
IMHO, it’s the most over-rated movie on IMDB. Might be OK if you’ve never watched the original Star Trek.
The High Cost of Loving (1958) with Jose Ferrer. The organization man faces losing his job as his company is merged with another and downsized.
I have a bit of an idee fixe about the next one and have posted before but…
My Summer Story (aka) It Runs in the Family (1994) with Charles Grodin and Kieran Culkin. The sequel to “A Christmas Story”. It is fated to always be in the shadow of it’s more famous predecessor. A pleasant movie if taken on it’s own terms. (Especially “movie dish night”.)
Not to my taste, but one of my coworkers HIGHLY recommends “Escanaba in da Moonlight” (2001) with Jeff Daniels.
The Biggest Little Farm
Incredibly enjoyable documentary about a couple who reclaims a run-down farm for their dog.
ETA:
Honeyland
Another wonderful documentary, but this one is not so light and airy.
Here we go again, JKelly - I am very fond of all 3 (Especially SP).
mmm
Guns At Batasi (1964) an obscure classic about a small British outpost in a fictional African nation during the switch to independence. The entire movie is quotable, but THIS SCENE the first confrontation of the protagonist and antagonist is a good one.
I suppose it is a student movie from thee quality, but Born Rich is well worth your time. It follows the heir of the Johnson & Johnson fortune on his 21st birthday when he gains full control over billions. We meet his friends, including Ivanka Trump and they talk about their childhoods and so on.
Also, Steve Martin’s take on Cyrano de Bergerac is called Roxanne. It is a fine film and very accessible for those who would not otherwise encounter the story.
That’s one that was quite well-known in its time – Martin and Daryl Hannah were both big stars, it was a major release, and it ranked #23 in total U.S. box office for the year. But, that was 35 years ago, and it does seem like it’s faded from public consciousness: I rarely (if ever) see it on the cable channels that run films from that era, or hear it mentioned.
I’ve been recommending A Midnight Clear here for many years as part of a Christmas movie rotation. Brilliantly acted by a notable cast (Ethan Hawke, Peter Berg, Kevin Dillon, Gary Sinise, Frank Whaley, and scene-stealer John C. McGinley), it’s the story of an intelligence squad in WWII that runs into a German squad with unexpected results.
Zulu is a 1964 movie loosely based on true events at Rorke’s Drift in South Africa, when 150 British soldiers fought off an attacking Zulu force of 4,000. Introduces a very young Michael Caine in his first major role.
The Coca-Cola Kid
Eric Roberts plays Becker, an ex-marine marketer for Coca-Cola who goes to Australia to coordinate a massive advertising blitz, then finds there’s an area where Coca-Cola doesn’t sell, because soft drinks are solely provided by a local brewer named T. George McDowell. The two butt heads, and Becker finds himself enmeshed with McDowell’s estranged family problems. Roberts nails the role as the cocksure type-A executive pushing his weight around while the laid-back Australians humor him and allow him to learn on his own that nothing is easy in the Outback.
The filmmakers didn’t seek Coca-Cola’s permission to make this movie, but they didn’t get sued. CC actually liked the movie because it didn’t make them look bad, and it helped to associate their brand with fun and adventure.
1979’s Zulu Dawn, about the Battle of Isandlwana (which took place the same day as Roarke’s Drift), is not as good as Zulu, but also worth seeing.
I always think its funny that the Victorian propaganda that ensured people remembered Rorke’s Drift (a brave steadfast, successful, but strategically irrelevant defence) rather the embarrassing abject defeat that was Isandlwana continues to this day thanks to the relative profile of these two movies.