Category: Underappreciated Movies

Jan 26 2015

This Week’s Underappreciated Movies

Every Monday, each of us will suggest a film that we feel too few people have seen.

r100

Melissa’s Pick of the Week: R100

I don’t think I can describe this film adequately, but I’ll give it a shot. See, there’s this lonely Japanese businessman, and he finds he’s turned on by being humiliated by women. So he finds out about this secret bondage club, which basically has this subscription service where they randomly send out dominatrixes to humiliate their customers in unexpected ways. Well, our protagonist finds this great for a while, but then when he learns that he might want to unsubscribe, he finds himself stalked by a herd of really creative dominatrixes. Just when you think this film couldn’t get more bizarre, it does.

R100 contains a perfect scene, by the way. It involves sushi.

Drafthouse Films just brought this one out on disc and various streaming services, so, if you’re into relentlessly bizarre filmmaking, this one is for you.

mostdangerousgame

Windy’s Pick of the Week: The Most Dangerous Game

With The Hunger Games series of movies coming to its conclusion, whet your appetite for the classic that (arguably) inspired it! The trope of men hunting men is well-established now, but Richard Connell’s 1924 short story is still being taught in classrooms because the power of the story still gets the blood pounding.

Joel McCrea stars as Bob Rainsford, the victim of a shipwreck. When he washes ashore on a nearby island, he is saved by Zaroff – who saves a lot of shipwreck survivors, it seems. Rainsford quickly learns exactly what entertainments Zaroff pursues on his lonely island, and soon he and Fay Wray are the prey in Zaroff’s sick game.

At only 63 minutes, it’s a shame to miss the story that started a sub-genre!

Jan 19 2015

This Week’s Underappreciated Movies

Every Monday, each of us will suggest a film that we feel too few people have seen.

may

Windy’s Pick of the Week: May

Unless you went to BNAT in 2001, you may have missed this delightful character-study/horror film. Lucky McKee directs Angela Bettis (who I wish popped up in more movies – she’s fantastic) as the titular May: an awkward girl who just wants to make a friend. Looking for a relationship, any relationship, May’s overtures are painfully realistic (we’ve all done or witnessed these scenarios), but May eventually overcomes in a truly creative fashion. Bettis anchors the film with her vulnerable and quirkily humorous performance – May is unabashedly optimistic and open to any path that looks promising. She’s joined by Jeremy Sisto and Anna Faris, so she has some solid and entertaining support.

Melissa adds: Whatever you do, don’t read the description on the back of the DVD box before watching this movie!

trucker

Melissa’s Pick of the Week: Trucker

Try this description on for size: the main character of Trucker is a semi-truck driver who finds himself forced into parenting an 11-year-old kid that he abandoned ten years previously. That sounds like it might be an okay 1970s-style melodrama, right? Well, try the real description instead: the driver in question is a woman. Played by Michelle Monaghan, Diane Ford is a unusual, deeply engaging, sometimes infuriating character. In her career of choice, she has become as battle-hardened as possible, and she is completely unthrilled at the prospect of being forced to be a mother again. It is Monaghan’s performance that turns this film from something ordinary to something extraordinary. Beyond that, director James Mottern manages to balance the melodrama so it never becomes saccharine. It’s a fine little film, and worth the work to track down. Also, bonus points for Nathan Fillion content. You want that, right? Sure you do!

Jan 12 2015

This Week’s Underappreciated Movies

Every Monday, each of us will suggest a film that we feel too few people have seen.

thewomen

Melissa’s Pick of the Week: The Women

This week, I urge you to seek out a 1939 black-and-white film called The Women. Starring Norma Shearer and a whole slew of other lady stars of the era, The Women has no less than 130 speaking roles, and every one is held by a lady. (The byline on the poster is, “It’s all about Men!” though, so go figure.) The script is sharp, the dialogue is rapid-fire snark, and the whole thing culminates in an outré Technicolor fashion show. Fun!

justimagine

Windy’s Pick of the Week: Just Imagine

I’ll let IMDB do a little of the work here:

New York, 1980: airplanes have replaced cars, numbers have replaced names, pills have replaced food, government-arranged marriages have replaced love, and test tube babies have replaced … well, you get the idea.

By no means a great movie, this is such a delightful view of what the “future” used to be that you can’t help but smile your way through it. To make sure there is a commentary on how futuristic everything is, a man from the “past” is revived in the far far future of 1980 and marvels at all the wonders he sees. He should be marveling at the daffy musical numbers, and mid-air chats while sitting on the wings of airplanes in “parking” mode!

The movie is currently on YouTube, so there’s no excuse for missing out on this oddball little film.

Jan 05 2015

This Week’s Underappreciated Movies

Every Monday, each of us will suggest a film that we feel too few people have seen.

IntoTheWoods

Windy’s Pick of the Week: Into the Woods (1991)

Alright people. This is where my musical snobbery really struts its stuff.
You saw the new Into the Woods and you really liked it! Great music, clever story, so much fun!

Find out just how much you’ve missed, and go watch the original Broadway cast in the original Broadway staging. (And lament that it’s not often you get the chance to do that. Broadway does a HORRIBLE job of archiving its arts and artists.) Bernadette Peters shines as the Witch, but Joanna Gleason as the Baker’s Wife will absolutely destroy you. If you suffered through the Gavroche-y Jack onscreen, discover just how delightful that character can be. And, much like book adaptations, you’ll also discover just how much was edited out.

If you saw the new Into the Woods and did not like it, or haven’t seen it at all – you can still watch this and fall in love. It’s on DVD and Blu-Ray, and you can probably grab most of it on Youtube if you’re incredibly lazy.

My friends are sick of hearing me whine about bad musical adaptations – but there really is no substitute for hearing talented, trained professionals at the top of their craft delivering these songs and these performances.

Berlin-Express

Melissa’s Pick of the Week: Berlin Express

Berlin Express is one of the noirest films noir around. Filmed partly in the desolation of bombed-out Dresden, this film is not just a crime caper, it is also a document of Europe’s fresh wounds from WWII. Jacques Tourneur (the man who gave us Cat People) directed this film with an international cast, who played a similarly diverse set of characters, all of whom are forced to cooperate amidst their shared suspicion of each other. Also, the film stars Robert Ryan, one of the finer square-jawed all-American actors of yesteryear. This film was very hard to find in the past, but it is now one of the finer rarities revived by the Warner Archives. It’s worth the work to find and watch!

Dec 29 2014

This Week’s Underappreciated Movies

Every Monday, each of us will suggest a film that we feel too few people have seen.

apple

Melissa’s Pick of the Week: The Apple

Let me start out by saying that I am under zero delusions that this is a good film. I’m just saying that, as a connoisseur of exquisitely terrible films of yesteryear, I have a deep love of The Apple.

If you don’t follow trends in cheeseball film appreciation, here’s the pitch: The Apple is perhaps the craziest film that ever crazied its way out of already-crazy Cannon Films. It lurched to life in 1980, just after the death of disco, meaning it was extinct at the moment it was born. It’s a musical (!) set in the distant future of 1994 (!!) where two naive Canadian folk musicians (!!!) get sucked into a sordid dystopia that is lead by an evil music corporation (!!!!). You can literally watch the budget evaporate during the running time of the film. And yes, I love it. I LOVE IT.

I mention the film this week because I first saw the film on New Year’s Eve several years ago, and to me, it’s perfect for exactly that (perhaps because there is SO MUCH GLITTER). May your 2015 be filled with strange delights.

session9

Windy’s Pick of the Week: Session 9

A movie completely dominated by its setting – the Danvers State Hospital, inspiration for Arkham Asylum, and known spooky-spot – this is the story of an asbestos-removal crew being slowly influenced by their surroundings. New father Gordon has bid on the removal job in part to help shore up his shaky marriage. But neither he nor his employees are prepared for the slow mind-bending power of a place so dominated by the past. The session 9 of the title refers to tapes of psychiatric sessions one of the employees finds and listens to. The reveal of that tape’s contents naturally dovetails with the climax of the slowly building tension. A quietly effective film.

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