Name one movie you think is excellent that you think other people would like that they wouldn’t know about or forgot about.
I watched “The International” 2009 the other day. What a good movie. Clive Owen is pissed off from the beginning to end which just makes it more intense than it already is. m.imdb.com
A Good Year starring Russell Crowe and Juliette Binoche. Slice of life movie masquerading as a Rom-Com. Starts slow but stay with it, a lot of fun.
The Villain
A very amusing western directed by Hal Needham that is basically a Roadrunner cartoon with human actors.
Some of the cast: Ann Margaret as the female lead, Arnold Schwarzeneger as Handsome Stranger (named for his father) as the noble but clueless guardian of Ann Margaret's character, Kirk Douglas as the villain, Paul Lynde as Nervous Elk, chief of the tribe that oversees everything.
Like the coyote, Douglas demonstrates amazing durability as he is hit by a train while glued to the crossing, run over by the giant boulder he unleashed, fell of a cliff while watching Ann-Margaret bathe, and a host of other disasters. A very funny movie for any of you who enjoyed the Roadrunner and the Three Stooges.
Ok - on the Clive Owen theme - Children of Men. Great dystopian Sci-Fi (near future) movie in which the world is dying because women lost the ability to have children for an unknown reason. A Good Year is OK, but there are about 15 better Ridley Scott movies. On the Russell Crowe theme, Master and Commander - great movie, one of my ATFs.
Road to Perdition
Tom Cruise as an Irish mob hit man during the Great Depression. A really intelligent film with themes of family relationships and the fruits of wrath. Surprisingly good watch.
^ you meant Tom Hanks, not Tom Cruise.
Lol, yeah, Tom Hanks.
13 Conversations About One Thing
Alan Arkin has never been better.
A long Good Friday
Mister Roberts 1965.
The version of Macbeth with Michael Fassbender that came out about 10 years ago. Obviously the Macbeth story is an all-time classic, but this movie was absolutely stunning from a visual standpoint, the acting was great and it was probably the best Shakespeare movie ever released.
Here’s two that you may not know about. They won’t be liked by all, excellent is something they may not be, but they’re uncommon movies, entertaining though very violent and gritty, and both have a stripper scene or stripper reference in them.
Deep Cover Laurence Fishburne & Jeff Goldblum Squeaky clean police officer is recruited by the DEA to be a full time undercover drug dealer. From the DEA to the dealers to the courts & politicians, they’re no heroes in this one.
Bound: Jennifer Tilly, Gina Gershon, Joe Pantoliano The trophy girlfriend to a mobster money man has a sexual encounter with the female building superintendent and they hatch a (risky) plan to steal a couple million in mob money.
Werner Herzog's Aguirre
And the Breakin' Movies. 1 and 2 Electric Bugaloo
Chinatown. Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. A well-written and beautifully acted movie with darkness and corruption at its heart.
Shadow - Mr. Roberts is one of the all time great pics. I was amazed it didn't win the Oscar for best picture (On the Waterfront), or best actor for Henry Fonda (Marlon Brando), and I watched it for the thousandth time last weekend. My pick for the pic people need to see is the black and white original version of "The Bad Seed". The audience in the theater went nuts when I first saw it 60 years ago when the antagonist dies, cheering, clapping and whistling. The antagonist is a pretty little blonde girl, aged 9. The only character I can think of as evil as her is the bad guy in dirty harry.
I have Mister Roberts on DVD but I noticed it is available to watch for free with commercials on TUBI.
I’ve said it before and it’s worth repeating. This movie is an under the radar comedy about a sheltered small town insurance salesman (Ed Helms) from Wisconsin that travels to an insurance seminar to the big City of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He meets other peers in the industry like John C Reilly and Anne Heche. Ed Helms gets wrapped up in an ethical dilemma and struggles with his identity after some eye opening dealings that include bribery and infidelity with Anne Heche. It’s an independent film so was never advertised titled “Cedar Rapids”.
Arlington Road (1999). Paranoid thriller with Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins which evokes 70s movies like The Parallax View and The Conversation and, to some extent, Chinatown, which is one of the best movies ever made but definitely not under the radar
Here's one for you PLs -- Lars and the Real Girl (2007). It's pretty much a chick-flick, "romantic comedy" type movie, with TUSCL-PL flavor. The main character believes his realistic life-sized latex love-doll is a real person, and his small town gathers forces to help him through his psychological crisis. Very sweet, but also very creepy if you think about it. How many of us TUSCL members have found ourselves similarly detached from reality with our own love-dolls? Asking for a friend. Of course. Never touched one m'self ...
Along the lines of "The Villain" (1979) is "Clockwise" (1986) in which John Cleese tries and fails to get there on time. Does it count as under-the-radar?
And props, kudos, to those of you who tried to include stripper scenes. I think we could put together a list of (a) movies that have unreasonably Hollywood-ized portrayals of working girls and cardboard-cutout predictable plots ("Showgirls" 1995, "Gigi" 1958) and another list of (b) movies that actually get the concept.
Hot Tub Time Machine rules..............................
I’ll give you another movie I really enjoyed, I saw it again recently it’s called “The Long Hot Summer” starring Paul Newman, and Joan Woodward, Orson Welles and a bunch of other A-Listers from the 40s &50s I think it came out in the middle 1950s, give it a chance it’s also a good movie. BTW Mr. Roberts was great, and another probably not so well known movie any more check out “The Sand Pebbles” with Steve McQueen, that’s a first class action movie as well.
Sand Pebbles is a fantastic movie and true story. Along that genre, the Charlton Heston flick, 55 Days at Peking is a fabulous flick, based on the Boxer rebellion of 1900. In retrospective it also explains why the Chinese government hates the west.
In Bruges.
Before cable TV, somehow Sand Pebbles and Mr. Roberts were movies I saw multiple times as a kid teenager. I haven’t thought about them until you guys mentioned them. Rewatch! I loved them both. Steve McQueen was the real deal. Good morning
Ensign Pulver, the sequel to Mr Robert’s, was good too (as I remember it).
The Ice Harvest, "As Wichita falls, so falls Wichita Falls"
Spy Game, with Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. Excellent.
"A Midnight Clear." A very interesting (and little seen) World War II movie that came out in 1992 starring Ethan Hawke and Gary Sinise among others. Well worth a watch.
Another movie I liked a lot, that wasn't very well known was “The Good Shepherd” with Matt Damon, about the origins of the CIA it’s a fictionalized account of a based on fact story. Very suspenseful and interesting.
I think “Silver Streak” with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever watched. It’s nearly 50 years old now, so there may be a lot of young people who’ve never heard of it. Don’t see it on TV a lot
"Nebraska" is a fairly recent movie that was not a hit but deserves to be seen. It is about real Americans in the real America. An old man believes he has won $1 million and needs to travel to collect his prize. So his son takes him on the journey, stopping in his old home town along the way. The movie stars Bruce Dern as the old man and Will Forte as his son. It is not a comedy exactly but it has some hilarious scenes.
Bruce Dern. Man, I love his work. Superb actor.
Peanut Butter Falcon. Seriously.
Got another movie that I watched recently “I’m Here” with Billy Crystal, and Tiffany Haddish, it’s also a bit of a rom-com, about a May-December romance, it’s a sweet funny, sad, story, but it was good. Maybe a bit too much of a chick flick but still I enjoyed it.
2 Days in the Valley
I concur with Jackslash’s recommendation on “Nebraska”. I remember watching it when it came out and thought even though it is dark, will forte played it well and shed comedy onto an unforgiving topic like dementia. My father watched it too and was just starting his dementia, and it was a real slap in the face to wake up to what was about to become to him shortly after that movie. Great story.
Layer Cake (2004) w Daniel Craig and Sienna Miller.
^ Sienna Miller looked so hot in her lingerie
The Time Traveler's Wife
Skibum mentioned The Bad Seed, which is a good movie. Two odd things jumped out at me: 1. There’s a scene where a group of adults are in a living room discussing the situation over drinks, and each one tosses down 3-4 martinis in the space of five minutes; 2. At the end, each of the actors comes out and takes a little bow, like in a play. Never saw that in another movie I think the whole point was to dispel any impression that the actor who played the titular role was a monster IRL
