Has anyone seen any of Fukasaku’s other work (especially Yakuza Graveyard, Sympathy for the Underdog, or Street Mobster)? I’m debating whether or not to pick up one of them next time I stop by the video store.
I’ve only seen bits of Sympathy for the Underdog, but it seemed pretty ok.
From Germany: Der Schuh des Manitu, a comic western.
I forget sometimes just how evil this film is… Its a very very good movie, which looks as if it could be made very badly…
However, played completely straight as a “season finale” marathon showing as if you stumbled across it on a sunday afternoon…
My favourite thing is when a contender criticises the programme makers, they get shot, or what happens is described as “The mentally ill man stabbed himself in the back eight times”…
Thought of another one on the way to work today: The Triplets of Belleville; French animation from about five years ago. Not quite like other animated movies you’ve seen, or even like other French films you’ve seen.
As the token Norwegian dude, I just have to plug “Flåklypa Grand Prix” (The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix) It’s a wonderfully quirky and thoroughly batty, naivistic Norwegian animation film from 1975. The graphics quality is fantastic and entertaining in it’s details, the sound is good and the plot is amusing for me both as young and grown up.
Highly recommended, especially if you’re feeling a bit nostalgic.
(It’s also very cool in the fact that the family, particularly the son of the dearly departed Ivo Caprino, frequently posts on the IMDB forums to answer questions and provide information. It’s cult status in Norway is comparably to MST3K and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with no other comparison intended. See it and be happy!)
Hawks, well, I’d be surprised if you find it… Someone borrowed my VHS and never gave it back. Not on DVD anywhere as far as I can tell…
Timothy Dalton and Anthony Edwards (from ER) in a hospital in London, the terminal cancer ward. Sounds depressing? Nope. A very black comedy about raging against the dying of the light…
Come and See a russian film made during the soviet era, about a young boy getting caught up with the resistance to the Nazis in Byelorussia as they are withdrawing… Shows exactly how horrible the nazis during that period. A classic film about war.
Wolf Creek a tale of backpacking gone wrong in Australia… One of the few horrors which has genuinely scared me, and even now gives me the shivers at one particular scene…
Like a lot of things you saw as a kid that left a mark, “Creation of the Humaniods” may well disappoint the grown-up version of you. It’s certainly a curiosity. It’s very talky with the action being limited to the actors moving from one position to another. More like a play than a movie.
It does have two twists, one which is sort of standard in the human vs android genre and a final one that is second only to ‘it was all a dream’ in it’s lameness.
As a kid I was expecting it to be a filmed version of Jack Williamson’s “The Humanoids”, which it most definitely isn’t.
Legend has it that it was Andy Warhol’s favorite movie, for what that’s worth. And it fits the OP’s request for movies that not a lot of people have seen. Just remember that sometimes there are good reasons why not a lot of people have seen a movie.
I’m in a rut for new entertainment and have been perusing through this thread for movies to check out …great suggestions!!! Couple more came to mind while reading through:
The Spanish Prisoner - Another David Mamet movie, kind of a “film noire” feel with Steve Martin (playing it straight!) Campbell Scott, Felicity Huffman…very smart flick.
Another funny Steve Martin movie that I think has been underappreciated is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Michael Caine is hilarious in this and Martin is not overly schticky.
Also, I’ve always thought that Hudson Hawk with Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello has gotten a bad rap…I think it’s got a certain charm, it’s worth giving it a try if you’ve never seen it.
Man on the Train (France 2002) - An aging bank robber nearing the end of his criminal career gets the homies together to hit one last bank in a remote town. When he steps off the train there, he meets a slightly older man who gives him a room and becomes his friend, and they gradually step into each others’ shoes, to the surprise of both.
Intimate Strangers (France 2004, by the same director) - A troubled woman with an errant sense of direction steps into a tax lawyer’s office, mistaking him for a psychiatrist, and spills her heart out. To say almost anything else would spoil it, but this is one heck of a film and you should seriously go see it.
It was marketed poorly - so soon after Bruce’s succes as an action hero I went in thinking it was an action movie. It was an action comedy and you need to expect that going in. I too think it was better than it was given credit.
Another one I forgot to mention: 5 x 2 / five times two - Five Times Two (2004) - IMDb.
It’s a film showing the lives of two people as they get married through to their divorce, but told in reverse. Very poignant and captivating.
Three Australian films…
With Heath Ledgers recent sad death, people will probably be all over Two Hands. It’s a great little film and much lost in the dazzle of his career. And Rose Byrne is appallingly cute in it, too.
The Rage In Placid Lake is a dry, witty, dark, funny little thing. And Rose Byrne is appallingly cute in it, too.
And, of course, The Man From Hong Kong, the film which will forever ensure that “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” was the second best thing George Lazenby was ever in. A great film despite the total abscence of Rose Byrne.
The Shop on Main Street: The Shop on Main Street (1965) - IMDb
A very moving film about a poor man who is given a old Jewish lady’s small shop, except she thinks he is just an employee for her. I make it sound like a comedy, and while it certainly does have some amusing scenes, it is a very powerful film, IMO.
I think its more than that… While Last Action Hero suffered the same fate, the critics seemingly completely resistant to any combination of Action and Comedy, did have a critical re-evaluation which rated it not as bad…
This hasn’t happened with Hudson Hawk. I have a friend who insists that it is bad. I’m not even sure if he has watched it. However, the straightlaced “star wars loving” Empire magazine deemed it to be bad, and I’m not really sure if my friend has any opinion forming ability anymore.
The 1980 release of The Lathe Of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin.
Desperate Remedies–a New Zealand film that hasn’t made it to DVD. Still available on VHS, though.
Based on a Thomas Hardy novel, but definitely not a tastefully bleak Masterpiece Theater-type production. Lush, overblown & drenched with bright colors. Every part is played dead seriously & over the top–at the same time! Starring the late Kevin Smith & others who became familiar to Herc & Xena fans…
The Woman Chaser is another odd one; saw it on the Sundance Channel & looked for it unsuccessfuly for some time. Patrick Warburton stars in a black-humor neo-noir (hmm… would that be *noir-*humor?) Quite difficult to describe.
Look, they made a VHS! Don’t blame me if you see it & then can’t get it out of your mind…
Not sure how cwell-known these are, but I rarely hear them mentioned or discussed
Ikarie XB-1 (AKA Voyage to the End of the Universe) Czeck science fiction film, based on a novel by Stanislas Lem. Interstellar voyage by the titular space craft. For some reason, my home town theater showed this back in the 1960s. The English-dubbed version has a hokey tacked-on ending where it’s revealed that the planet they get to is…Earth! (this was years before Planet of the Apes). Efvidently the ship is really crewed by humanoid aliens. Apparently the film is now available on DVD with the original end intact.
Android Quirky little SF flick with Klaus Kinski as the creator of android Max404, who, in the best traditions, is trying to Become Human. Low-budget flick
The Ugly Little Boy – apparently a made-for-TV film from 1977 based on Isaac Asimov’s story of the same name (Not the novel, which was written later). Probably overall the most faithful adaptation of Asimov I’ve seen. With Barry Morse (who directed) and Kate Reid (who’d been in The Andromeda Strain). I saw this in a 16mm sound film version. Don’t know if it’s available in any video format.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0176261/
Here’s one I haven’t seen yet, but it’s got good buzz:
Grand Tour – low-budget SF based on Henry Kuttner’s novella Vintage Season, which is in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame Vol. II. There’s little enough good SF film, let alone anything based on classic Sf stories. Starring Jeff Daniels, and made by Jeff Twohy, who did Pitch Black:
“Harry and Tonto” about an older retired widower who has to evacuate his apartment for a parking lot, and travels the country on a car, visiting his three children in the process, but meeting and observing many others! Considering Art Carney won the Best Actor (beating out Pacino, Hackman, Nicholson, Hoffman), this movie seems to have been under the radar.
I just went through my list of my 100 favorite films to find anything that’s truly obscure. Maybe it’s one of these. I don’t know. I can’t tell what’s obscure. Some of the ones people have mentioned so far aren’t really obscure, I think. I realize that this is a zombie thread:
Blood Simple. (1985, U.S., dir. Joel Coen)
Chungking Express (1994, Hong Kong, dir. Kar Wai Wong)
Code of Silence (1985, U.S., dir. Andrew Davis)
Dark Star (1974, U.S., dir. John Carpenter)
The Last American Virgin (1982, U.S., dir. Boaz Davidson)
A Little Romance (1979, U.S., dir. George Roy Hill)
Salvador (1986, U.S., dir. Oliver Stone)
Slacker (1991, U.S., dir. Richard Linklater)
Starting Over (1979, U.S., dir. Alan J. Pakula)
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978, Italy, dir. Ermanno Olmi)
The Year of Living Dangerously (1983, Australia, dir. Peter Weir)