. The White, The Yellow And The Black (1975)
AKA ‘Samurai’ and ‘Shoot first… Ask Questions Later’. A pretty funny and well written spaghetti western. Worth a watch if your looking for some light entertainment and a few laughs.
. Get Him To The Greek (2010)
Don’t understand why films like ‘Superbad’ (2007) and ‘21 Jump Street’ (2010) become beloved classics while this was forgotten. It’s got the comedy of a raunchy late-2000’s Seth Rogan like film and the action of a James Bond movie. The inclusion of Pedo Diddy didn’t age well but that can be forgiven.
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I recently saw this mind bending time travel movie called Primer.
Kidding.
A few indie movies I really like are Ink (2009), Sidewalls (2011), and Cashback (2006). I’ve linked to some trailers but I hope people just jump feet first without knowing or presuming anything.
Ink is super low budget but it’s really one of my all time faves. It starts off sort of like film school assignment early 2000’s dystopian scifi fantasy and ends as tear jerker. The full movie is on YT here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIdqnPxfzj0
2022’s Vesper was fantastic but I assume a lot of people know this one.
Also, for those looking for some 90s nostalgia, I recently rewatched Singles (1992) for the first time since the nineties and it still holds up.
A few I liked that maybe went under a few radars were The Guest, The Dead Don’t Die, Brick, and Dave Made A Maze.
A Scanner Darkly (2006) is a rotoscoped movie based on a Philip K Dick novel set in future LA with a detective trying to find the supply of a dangerous new drug while being addicted to it and suffering from his addiction. The rotoscoping helps add a vibe of delirium to the movie and it is well acted including probably one of the best uses of Keanu Reeves as an actor.
One of Robert Downey Jr’s best roles. He was so detached and horrible in the role while being an absolute goofball (that silencer and the bike). He reminded me of a few tweakers I used to know.
Checking out more of Richard Linklater’s work is also highly recommended.
Waking Life (2001)
Philosophy and dreams combine for an enlightening journey. It’s a good rewatch if you’ve not seen it in a long while.
Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), Before Midnight (2013, I haven’t seen this one)
Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy have beautiful explorations of love and the human condition.
I like that two different people recommended Linklater films. But the ones you listed in response to A Scanner Darkly are my favorites of his. You should finish the trilogy.
Dark Star(1974), directed by John Carpenter (The Thing) and written by him and Dan O’Bannon (Alien). Worth a watch for the low-budget effects and realistic depiction of what it must be like to be stuck in a spaceship for 20 years with the same people.
Don’t forget discussing existentialism with the bomb.
I tried but gave up after 10 minutes
Arlington Road (1999)
Tim Robbins, Joan Cusack, Jeff Bridges in a taut, pre-9/11 domestic terrorism thriller. I’d pair this with the much better known Denzel Washington film The Siege (1999). Last I checked, this film is not on any streaming platform. Good luck!
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001)
This Inuit story captivated me. An all-Inuit cast portraying a fable from thousands of years ago. The nearly 3h run time will challenge many. The National Film Board of Canada
Brick (2005)
Fans of Knives Out should really see Rian Johnson’s first feature film. Smart and steeped in film noir, with a fantastic and unique script, this flick starring Joseph Gordon-Leavitt.
It’s the only horror movie that ever gave me a nightmare, even as a younger kid than I was when I saw it.
My parents were willing to let me watch horror movies pretty young, depending on the exact movie. Like, old school fifties and sixties era horror I was laughing about at 5. So they had gradually loosened the limits up because it never bothered me, nor did I get obsessed.
So we watched this one one night after I picked it out at the video rental place (vhs). It wasn’t scary per se, I did way more laughing than anything else because the effects were not impressive.
But the core idea of it, that stuck in my brain apparently, because that night, and a couple after, I had the nightmare of the Manitou growing in me.
I’ve seen it as an adult a few times, and it isn’t exactly a great movie, despite being a fairly classic example of body horror. Decent, not not great, and you have to overlook the era’s film making style.
I’m not aware of where it might be available, but YouTube has a few clips.
I’ve never had anyone, online or irl, know that it existed, much less having also watched it.
I don’t like the phrasing ‘only you know about’ because that’s not an easy standard to meet, however I have seen a lot of movies…
The Man From Earth (2007) - College professors discuss many topics with a colleague who claims to be thousands of years old. Fully dialogue driven movie shot almost entirely in one room. Great pacing but just a little cheesy in a few spots.
Cube (1997) - Without remembering how they got there, several strangers awaken in a prison of cubic cells, some of them booby-trapped. Also sort of cheezy but quite engaging and dialogue driven. Oddly enough this one was also shot in one room, sort of.
Suburbia (1983) - An overwhelming sense of despair impels a teenager to leave his suburban home and join up with a group of punk rockers. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who has a soft spot for the punk scene of the early 80s…
SubUrbia (1996) - not as good as the totally unrelated 1983 suburbia, but still pretty good - Five teen friends spend their time hanging out behind a convenience store in a sleepy Texas town. This one really reminds me of my childhood, spending all night smoking cigarettes with friends in the parking lot of a gas station, doing nothing, wasting away life.
I’ll add more if I think of any.
I mostly watch old movies these days (40’s and 50’s) and I have a million of those that I love but it’s kind of hard to judge how obscure they might be. People who watch old movies probably have heard of most of the great old movies I have seen.
Upvote for the Man from earth. I imagine his situation a lot after this film.
A goofy, Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker-adjacent spy spoof from France. Stunningly, the same director and male and female leads wouldater collaborate on 2011’s Oscar winning The Artist.
Zombie Strippers! (2008) is far better than it has any right to be, especially if they had kept in the deleted scene. The film has Jenna Jameson as a stripper at a club who turns into a sexy zombie, getting a lot of fans in the process. The other strippers as well as others tied to the strip club then have to deal with the consequences as more strippers become zombies to increase their earnings.
Ahhh, Lemmy really is taking over from reddit… using the word “underrated” to mean “not top-of-all-time popular.”
Top comments being Keanu Reeves, John Carpenter, Seth Rogan, et cetera.
Yeah, prob wasn’t the best choice of words. I meant “underrated” as in “obscure” or “unknown”
Def History of the Occult (Historia De Lo Oculto), an Argentinian sort of supernatural horror/thriller. Came out in 2020, I searched high and low for it, it used to be on Shudder. I couldn’t even find it to torrent it.
Probably fairly well known in Argentina itself, though.
Colin was a zombie movie told from the point of view of the guy turning into a zombie. Made headlines at the time because the guys that created it only spent 220£. I believe it was only shown at a film festive, but crappy copies are to be found online.
I remember liking it at the time, and it has a great ending! Not sure how it would hold up, but I finally found a watchable copy.
Two good movies my wife and I saw in the last year and we were pretty much the only ones in the theater:
The Last Stop in Yuma County, a tense indie crime movie set almost entirely in an isolated gas station diner. Loads of, “Hey, that’s that guy from that thing…” actors in it.
Outlaw Johnny Black, a comedic Western produced, directed, written by, and starring Michael Jai White as a revenge-obsessed outlaw who has to pose as the town’s new preacher.
I was gonna say this Bosnian war film I caught on the public broadcaster 2 decades ago, but it apparently won a fuckin oscar, so I now recommend you watch Birdemic instead.
Birdemic is a bad movie where everyone does a bad job making it. The only part that makes it somewhat interesting is that it includes obvious wish fulfillment by the writer-director.
