Dark Star.
Tapeheads.
Hud.
Unbelievably weird movie…
Beaten at the box office by nearly everything. It’s one of the biggest money-losers ever. But I don’t think it was that good, so I’m less troubled by it.
The Big Lebowski is probably more popular here than most places. I’ll add Wet Hot American Summer. I didn’t see it in theatres, I thought it looked like crap. A friend showed it to me and it turned out to be a very funny movie with a sick sense of humor and a great skewering of crappy '80 summer camp movies.
I actually have this movie on DVD. It’s one of the most faithful adaptations of any book you might watch. John Hurt IS Winston Smith, perfect look and everything. One of those faces that looks twenty years older than they are. And this was Richard Burton’s last role before he died, about two-three months after filming. It’s a shame it didn’t get much attention except as Burton’s last film.
This one’s in my Top Ten SF films. The script is by the excellent Nigel Kneale. (The original BBC broadcast – not the movie – is also available. I’ve got a copy). While you’re at it, the first two Quatermass films also belong on this list:
The Quatermass Xperiment (AKA The Creeping Unknown in the US)
Quatermass 2 (they didn’t use Roman Numerals for sequels in the 1950s. AKA Enemy from Space in the US)
Under no circumstances should you watch The Quatermass Conclusion. Even though Kneale wrote it, too, it’s unbelievably awful, thus proving the rule that “the worst book of the trilogy is the fourth one”.
A Midnight Clear. Terrific, but near-unknown WWII film.
All the other ones I would have named are already named.
I haven’t had a chance to see 25th Hour yet, but I hear it is really good.
Posted by Mycroft Holmes
I’ve seen it and enjoyed it. I, too, consider myself a Spike Lee fan. I liked Crooklyn a lot and Summer of Sam, too.
Gail:
One of my favorite lines from Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update (I think this was either Dennis Miller or Kevin Nealon) was that Spike Lee was making a sequel to it called “The Cronx.”
Incidentally, here is “Bad Astronomer” Phil Plaitt’s review for Five Million Years To Earth".
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/goodmovies.html
(Scroll down almost to the bottom).
I’ll mention 2 more overlooked movies.
Manhunter (1986) This was made before Hannibal Lecter became famous in “Silence of the Lambs”. In fact, that character is portrayed by Brian Cox in this film.
“Manhunter” was recently remade in 2002 and named “Red Dragon”. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289765/
This was done (no doubt) in order to “cash in” on Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in “Silence of the Lambs”.
Vanishing Point (1971) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067927/
A very unusual cult movie about someone attempting to deliver a car from Denver to SanFrancisco over a weekend. Lots of quirky characters pop up along the way. Dean Jagger is terrific as a cantankerous desert-dwelling rattlesnake hunter.
Guess I forgot the IMDB link for Manhunter (1986).
Another Rosenbaum goodie: The Shooting.
Showing the Western-nouveau influence of Sergio Leone, this revolutionary Monte Hellman film is easily the equal of The Man With No Name trilogy. Also showing the influence of Anthony Mann’s classic 50’s westerns, this is one of the most underrated American Westerns, and one of the mst underrated films of the late 60’s.
I never would have thought anyone would have mentioned Five Million Years to Earth. I love this movie. It shocked me to find out that it came from a TV show and that there are other movies. Has the TV show every been shown in the states? I would love to get my hands on it.
AFAIK it has never been shown in the States, even on PBS. The scripts to all three were published by Penguin back in the 50s or 60s (I’ve got two of them). Specialty Video houses sell the complete Quatermass and the Pit on VHS, and the sell incomplete copies of I and II. I’m not sure who it was – I think it was Something Weird Video. Try looking at the ads in the backs of weird movie fan nmagazines, like FilmFax.
I just rented Bell, Book, and Candle. Probably not unknown, and probably not underrated, but certainly not widely seen anymore.
It is one of a small collection of movies that I occasionally watch to get a different perspective on the 1950s. As a baby boomer (born in 1957), my image of the '50s is largely shaped by Leave it to Beaver, etc. In other words, the suburban family, with the father laboring at some anonymous white-collar job in the city, the mother at home, vacuuming in high heels and pearls, and the kids (three to five of them) dealing with school, friends, dating, etc. Oh, and of course it is all in black and white (think Pleasantville).
But this movie (along with such films as Anatomy of a Murder, Rear Window, and even Psycho (1962, but very much a '50s film nontheless), is concerned with a very different world, that of the grown-up 1950s.
In this movie, adults work in the city, at real jobs (publisher and retail store owner operator), they socialize with other adults, read the Kinsey Report, crack off-color jokes, drink in nightclubs, have sex (very strongly implied, although the nakedest they got was bare feet!), and all those other things beyond the ken of black-and-white TV. Fascinating.
The movie is also an interesting window into the visual style of the period, with it’s distinctive decor, clothing, industrial design, etc. The “Populuxe” style was largely a suburban phenomenon; the urban '50s had touches of it, but overall was much less ornamented, with a certain stark beauty of it’s own.
The film is set in Manhatten at mid-winter. Part of the film contains a montage – or perhaps just an extended pan – of the snow-covered city. Manhatten has never looked so beautiful in any film before or since. (While the film is set on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, there are almost no Christmas decorations visible – appropriate to the storyline, and another reflection of the “grown-up” nature of the film.)
Finally, I have read some commentary that the witches underground life is an allegory for gay life in the '50s. While I usually resist analyses that attempt to insert gay, sexual, or (especially) Fruedian subtexts to literature (Frodo and Sam are gay, Hamlet was in love with his mother, etc.), this one seems plausible to me. Another interesting view into the period that would never show up in Leave it to Beaver.
It Came from Outer Space, especially if you can see it in 3-D. Very good “alien invaders” film with a fascinating plot twist. Jack Arnold is a forgotten genius.
Springtime in the Rockies – a very entertaining 40s musical with Carmen Miranda at her best. You can actually understand why she was a star, and seeing her in person after years of seeing copies of copies of parodies of copies of imitations of stereotypes is a revelation.
Cobb – Fascinating character study of one of the greatest – and most psychotic – of all athletes. Tommy Lee Jones deserved an Oscar nod at Ty Cobb and Robert Wuhl was nearly as good. This wasn’t a typical sports biography – Cobb is a foul-mouthed racist bastard, and it concentrates on the end of his life, not on his winning championships (there’s only one short flashback scene where he is shown playing baseball at all). No one went to see it, even after some good reviews. Jones plays him with all his nastiness, and complexity.
Oh, What a Lovely War! – a great antiwar film, and certainly the best film about WWI. Based on a stage play, it portrays the war metaphorically, as an entertainment. Effective when juxataposing the pro-war sentiment (shown as an amusement park) with the reality. It’s also a lot of fun, in a perverse way.
All These Women (though a more literal translation would be “Let’s Not Talk About All These Women”). A slapstick comedy. By Ingmar Bergman. That alone makes it intriguing. It’s actually pretty funny in parts.
A Night in Casablanca – even Marx Brothers fans tend to overlook this one, but it was their best later film. The packing scene deserves to be listed as one of their best.
Room Service – The knock on it is dead on: it isn’t really a “Marx Brothers” film, since it sticks to the play it was based on. However, it’s still a very funny film, and was one of their biggest box office successes. Interesting historically to see the Marxes working with Lucille Ball.
Cool, I’ll have to see if i can find this. Given the pleasure I’ve gotten out of Highway 61, I’d love to see something else by the same director.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Daniel
and subtle off-color humor. One of my favorite dialogue exchanges is from Bell, Book, and Candle:
Jimmy Stewart: She says really is a witch!
Se: Oh,no, darling. She just can’t spell.
Cal, the other one I like from that movie is:
Kim Novak: “Magic in Mexico? Did you publish that book?”
Jimmy Stewart: “No, but I sure wish I did. It sold like the Kinsey report!”
KN: “I don’t know why, it’s completely phony. I think the natives just filled him up with tourist nonsense.”
JS: “Well, they may have done that to Kinsey, too.”
This exchange is particularly funny given that Kinsey’s methodolgy has been pretty much discredited…
Metropolitan. Whit Stillman’s first film. Teen angst and unrequited love, but with trust funds and classical educations. Absolutely brilliant dialogue. I loved it; all my college classmates turned up their noses. “Why would anyone want to see a movie about rich white kids sitting around talking about stuff?” asked the rich white kids sitting around talking about stuff.
Leningrad Cowboys Go America. Directed by Aki Kaurismaki, the guy who almost won Best Foreign Film this year. A Finnish bar band tours the southern US en route to a gig in Mexico. You just have to see it to believe it. (Jim Jarmusch plays the first car salesman; Ice Cube plays the second one.)
Rita, Sue and Bob Too. Directed by Alan Clarke, who unfortunately died four years later. Two Yorkshire teenage girls in the '80s; their lives suck until they start having sex with the father of their babysitting charges. I’m still amazed by the confrontation scene 3/4 of the way through. There are so many people talking, and it’s shot from so many different angles, it must have required countless takes…and yet the pacing is perfect and the intensity never wavers.
Although I normaly despise Renée Zellweger, I have to recommend Love and a .45. Great, fun movie that most people I know haven’t seen.
Out of the many, what to choose?
A Michael York action yarn called Zeppelin. Kind of like a WWI-era Raid on Entebbe. (Only, y’know, with the “heroes” being German villains.) I especially like it……because the villains’ plan fails pretty much without the hero doing anything.
And…:drumroll:…I liked Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes. Probably better than the original.
And I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who ever saw the claymation Mark Twain movie. What little I can remember of it (I haven’t seen it since I was five) has been burned into my mind.