We haven’t done this recently, and I always end up getting some killer recommendations from these threads.
Please – just post one or two recommendations and add a few words (avoiding spoilers, obviously) about the film or films. Let’s make these actual recommendations, and not just lists proving how obscure our movie-going habits can be.
Mine:
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not – that sweet little Audrey Tatou (Amelie) is an art student in love with a married cardiologist who doesn’t seem to return her ardor. Not at all what I expected, but – no, “and” – extremely well done.
disFIGURED is a movie centered around two women, an anorexic and an obese, who befriend and learn the different and similar body issues they have.
Banlieue 13 is a high energy french movie set in the near future in a John Carpenter Escape to/from New York type plot. A bit of parkour and brutal violence, and not a lot of plot to speak of… so definitely a popcorn flick.
Fear Eats The Soul.
Ali, a Moroccan guestworker in Germany in his late thirties, and Emmi , a 60-year-old widowed cleaning woman, fall in love and marry. Everything does not go smoothly.
Moolade is about an African village where the young girls are about to undergo circumcision, and they seek shelter with a local woman. It sounds depressing and heavy, but it’s got a lot of humor and lightness and affection to it also. It’s a really great movie that nobody’s ever heard of.
Snow Cake–Tragedy throws together a troubled man (Alan Rickman) and a high-functioning autistic woman (Sigourney Weaver). Rickman and Weaver, what’s not to like?
Fishing with Ghandi - 1998 - A hitchhiker ends up riding with two brothers (played by real-life twins John and James Reichmuth) who provide a non-stop commentary of hilarious nonsense. Not much happens and the movie must have cost about 38-bucks, but the dialogue is truly funny. It gets better with each viewing!
I’ve got two–which I know I’ve recommended before:
The Woman Chaser stars Patrick Warburton as a used car salesman who wants to make a movie. In the worst way. Neo noir with a vein of very black humor. Or maybe it’s just demented. Saw this on cable but haven’t sought out the VHS; no DVD release, apparently. Hard to forget–but that might mean that I’m demented, too!
Desperate Remedies is a New Zealand film I bought (on VHS only, of course) because it starred some vets of the Xena/Hercules shows. It’s a lush, overwrought, arty, homoerotic bodice-ripper that really needs a DVD release to exhibit the lush, overwrought art direction. If liking it makes me demented, I don’t want to be sane!
Two strangers meet on the road and travel through Nevada on motorcycle to find an elusive spot where they can dump another man’s ashes. Full of cameos (Tim Leary, David Carradine, John Cusack, Don Cheadle).
Helvetica is a documentary, so maybe it doesn’t exactly fit into this criteria, but for a film about typefaces it had me completely riveted. It goes over the history of the font, typesetting in general and how typefaces are used in graphic design.
If you get a chance to see the Beautiful Losers film (Aaron Rose, Ed Templeton, Harmony Korine, Margaret Kilgallen and Geoff McFetridge, among others), it’s another one that’s absolutely spellbinding with a killer soundtrack. It also made me decide to quit my job. Apparently that happens not infrequently.
Vozvrashcheniye (The Return from Russian filmmaker Andrei Zvyagintsev, is about two young boys who have grown up with their mother, grandmother, and a single picture of their father. The father shows up one day to take them on a fishing trip and teach them (in prototypical Russian gruffness) how to be men, but ends up taking them along on some kind of shady business that has them taking a small boat to a remote island where (unbeknownst to the boys) the father digs up a case. The film has all the trappings of some kind of mystery-thriller, but instead ends up being much more meditative and tragic. The performance of Ivan Dobronravov (a dead ringer for a Sixth Sense era Haley Joel Osment) as the outwardly resentful boy who is fundamentally just as desirous of a real father figure as his sycophantic older brother is nothing short of spectacular, and at the end of the film, where the boys now have to apply the rude but valuable lessons their father has taught them, has resonance without seeming forced or artificial.
I’ve been waiting for Zvyagintsev’s follow-up, Izgnanie (The Banishment) to come out on Region 1 & 2 DVD.
Mimi’s First Time. Caught it on Lifetime, figured it to be the usual dreck. But…
Features Alec Baldwin, Jeff Goldblum, Carrie Ann Moss, Luke Wilson and Nikki Reed in a really good murder-sex tale. It’s not Hamlet, but really entetaining…
Deathwatch. One of the best SF book adaptations, which Harvey Keitel as a reporter covering a woman’s death. Anticipated reality TV by years.
Screen Door Jesus – fascinating film about the varieties of religious faith. With the memorable line, “If Jesus has super powers, he could make a robot with a soul.”
Zazie dans le metro: French, with English subtitles. It’s about a young girl spending a day or two exploring Paris. I caught it on TCM one night and couldn’t look away. Very 1960 frantic.
Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story: Mockumentary starring Rob Corddry about a paintball player coming back from disgrace. Not as funny as a Christopher Guest flick, but quietly worth watching.
Brand Upon the Brain!: I don’t really know how to explain this one. A recently made silent movie about orphans on an island. You get to pick the narrator on the dvd, from a list including Isabella Rossellini, Laurie Anderson, John Ashbery, and Crispin Glover.
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains: Made in 1982 but really only got released recently. Stars a very young Diane Lane and Laura Dern, plus various members of The Clash and the Sex Pistols. Three girls form a punk rock band and go on tour.