The Underrated
by Tin_ear | created - 11 Feb 2014 | updated - 01 Jul 2014 | PublicThese are the films I feel have been given a short shrift by the film review world or audiences in general. By my own judgement these films rank at least one or more stars higher than what IMDb represents. They are by no means all great or equal to each other, just under-appreciated.
- Instant Watch Options
- Genres
- Movies or TV
- IMDb Rating
- In Theaters
- Release Year
- Keywords
1. The 400 Blows (1959)
Not Rated | 99 min | Crime, Drama
A young boy, left without attention, delves into a life of petty crime.
Director: François Truffaut | Stars: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Albert Rémy, Claire Maurier, Guy Decomble
Votes: 127,981
The film is perfect, there is nothing that could be added or subtracted. Though autobiographical, the movie perfectly captures the aspect of childhood where you simultaneously want to cling to and flee from your parents. Part of the lead's charm is that the director-writer allowed his actor's personality to shine through. There are moments when he doesn't seem to even be acting, which is why I consider this to be the most entertaining and truest expression of the French New Wave movement's values. A movement that held naturalism, social issues, and personal expression so highly.
A low eight, really?
2. The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Approved | 102 min | Crime, Drama, Romance
A debonair, adventuresome bank executive believes he has pulled off the perfect multi-million dollar heist, only to match wits with a sexy insurance investigator who will do anything to get her man.
Director: Norman Jewison | Stars: Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Paul Burke, Jack Weston
Votes: 28,014
This Norman Jewison film somehow accomplishes the task of offering something for everybody, a heist, romance, and suspense. The films ages pretty well considering it was in an era when most films age terribly. The theme-song and direction are incredible. Though in actuality almost anyone could work in a film this well made, Dunaway and McQueen's chemistry almost makes you think they were born to play these roles.
3. Last Tango in Paris (1972)
NC-17 | 129 min | Drama, Romance
A young Parisian woman meets a middle-aged American businessman who demands their clandestine relationship be based only on sex.
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci | Stars: Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, Maria Michi, Giovanna Galletti
Votes: 58,293 | Gross: $36.14M
We often wish we were someone else, dissociate from our pain or responsibilities, perhaps in another city. What is Paris if not for dreamers (at least the attractive parts in travel brochures and Woody Allen films). A good reminder that for every fantasy or whirlwind romance there is a crashing collapse or a jading slow fade-out back to reality.
4. Informant (I) (2012)
Unrated | 81 min | Documentary
A documentary on radical left-wing activist turned FBI informant, Brandon Darby.
Director: Jamie Meltzer | Stars: Brandon Darby, Scott Crow, Lisa Fithian, Caroline Heldman
Votes: 361
Yet another example of the detrimental effects of politics on movie rating on IMDb, but not surprising considering that Michael Moore's mostly useless examination of firearm-culture in America, Bowling For Columbine, garnered an eight. While the film did not focus on the ethical questions concerning the use of police/F.B.I. informants as well as it could have, a 5.7 seems way too low for a film that factually presents the facts of the 2008 Republican Convention 'terrorism scare' while raising doubt on the veracity of its subject's motivations. Darby's turn from radical left-libertarian to right wing-libertarian is critical in understanding who he is (and also the nuances of libertarianism and the division of American politics into a binary arrangement...); whether you like or hate that is not really the point. Whether you think the transformation occurred before or after the convention implies a subjectivity which lifts a mundane he said-he said legal dispute into into a legitimately interesting story.
Generally anytime you see a disproportionate number of '1' user ratings amid a sample size this small you should disregard the aggregated score.
5. Power (1934)
104 min | Drama, History, Romance
The story of life in the 18th century Jewish ghetto of Wurtemburg. Suess tries to better himself with the help of an evil Duke.
Director: Lothar Mendes | Stars: Conrad Veidt, Benita Hume, Frank Vosper, Cedric Hardwicke
Votes: 234
Garnering a depressingly low 6.4, I'd make the case that this is one of the more politically important films of the first half of the Twentieth Century.
6. Breathless (1983)
R | 100 min | Action, Drama, Romance
When Jesse Lujack steals a car in Las Vegas and drives down to LA, his criminal ways only escalate - but when will it end?
Director: Jim McBride | Stars: Richard Gere, Valérie Kaprisky, Art Metrano, John P. Ryan
Votes: 10,411 | Gross: $19.91M
Jean-Luc Godard once said that all you need to make a movie was 'a girl and a gun.' It's a great line, but wrong. You also need a great soundtrack, washboard abs, nice tits, and fantastic trousers. Mark Kermode deserves credit for recognizing the necessity of that last one.
7. The Osterman Weekend (1983)
R | 103 min | Action, Drama, Thriller
During the Cold War, a controversial television journalist is asked by the C.I.A. to persuade certain acquaintances, who are Soviet Agents of the Omega network, to defect.
Director: Sam Peckinpah | Stars: Rutger Hauer, John Hurt, Craig T. Nelson, Dennis Hopper
Votes: 9,404 | Gross: $6.49M
Sam Peckinpah tried his best to render the plot indecipherable, but not knowing exactly what the &#%! is going on kinda suits it what with the undercurrent of rampant coke, financial shenanigans, implied sexual repression (take notice that most of the people who have sex in this movie die horrible deaths, an AIDS allusion?), and general paranoia. At very least Peckinpah went out in a blaze of narcotics, arrows, righteous vengeance, and tits. There's a clever twist in which the man on t.v. watches the domestic squabbles, recriminations, executions and backbiting unfolding in the real-life home of a t.v. celebrity. A commentary either presaging reality t.v. or denouncing the fact that even with MTV, HBO, and porno, there is nothing better than all-American dysfunction.
8. Vampire's Kiss (1988)
R | 103 min | Comedy, Crime, Fantasy
After an encounter with a neck-biter, a publishing executive thinks that he's turning into a vampire.
Director: Robert Bierman | Stars: Nicolas Cage, Maria Conchita Alonso, Jennifer Beals, Elizabeth Ashley
Votes: 20,820 | Gross: $0.73M
Though the film is clearly, at least in my mind, a spoof, the film is still unusually creepy. The lead character somewhat sympathetic in his pathetic mental breakdown, after committing not fantastic horror-crimes, but real, frightening transgressions against society. The genre long having been strip-mined, offered up one last decent film in the sorry decade. The fact that audiences and individuals could laugh, shudder, and recoil in disgust or embarrassment at different scenes and even the same scenes simultaneously was one of the great avant-garde stunts yet accomplished. People who never thought twice about seeing a woman chased by a lone nut in an empty building suddenly (hopefully) became conscious of what that actually entails on a visceral emotional level and what that says about us as viewers.
...But judging by its IMDb score, maybe not.
9. Indecent Proposal (1993)
R | 117 min | Drama, Romance
A billionaire offers $1,000,000 to a young married couple for one night with the wife.
Director: Adrian Lyne | Stars: Robert Redford, Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson, Seymour Cassel
Votes: 78,032 | Gross: $106.61M
I think a lot of the ire toward Adrain Lyne's movie is centered on the fact people thought it was immoral, pornographic, or thought the female lead was represented as a slut or as a gold digger and therefore implied that all women are shallow. Alternately a lot of people hated the Woody Harrelson character for being so whiny and insecure. This seems to miss the point entirely (not just because you only got to see half of Demi Moore's nipple at any one given moment, that men are more readily allowed to succumb to sexual impulses with fewer consequences than women, or that the husband actually had very good reason for being insecure as the plot reveals...). Money is reportedly one of the most common root causes of domestic disputes and legal justifications for divorces (not to mention most fought over asset in divorces after human beings.) I think this silly, erotic thriller may have cut a little too close to home for a lot of people. It's no masterpiece, the story's convoluted, and ending is a little too neat, but it's by no means the worst film of the year. You can tell the Razzies are a legit institution in pop-culture when they begin making Oscar-worthy blunders in judgement. A 'statement award' if ever was one. The IMDb message boards are quite sensible in debating and refuting these points. Sometimes it's refreshing to see average movie buffs standing up to cynical reviewer snobs.
If you round up I figure it is a '7.'
10. I Accuse My Parents (1944)
Approved | 68 min | Crime, Drama
James "Jimmy" Wilson, a young man neglected by his parents, goes to work for a bunch of gangsters to impress his nightclub-singer girlfriend.
Director: Sam Newfield | Stars: Mary Beth Hughes, Robert Lowell, John Miljan, Vivienne Osborne
Votes: 3,064
If I may disagree with Mystery Science Theater 3000, this forgotten B is nearly a decent (5-ish) movie. The production values are on par with films of the era, its acting is okay, the story not as horrid some 'prestige' pictures of the Forties (The Big Sleep, I'm looking at you), and the story does take an interesting angle with the latch-key dad and lush mother. It deserves credit despite its flaws for broaching the subject of $@!&&/ parenting in an era when that was not talked about anywhere outside of social hygiene pictures. The fact that a lot of juvenile delinquency and emotional problems are rooted in lousy, lonely childhoods is easy to overlook.
11. Casablanca (1942)
PG | 102 min | Drama, Romance, War
A cynical expatriate American cafe owner struggles to decide whether or not to help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape the Nazis in French Morocco.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains
Votes: 605,515 | Gross: $1.02M
Not going out on much of a limb here. Another perfect film that IMDbers regard beneath the likes of The Dark Knight, Inception, and Leon: The Professional. Time will correct this injustice I suspect.
12. M (1931)
Passed | 99 min | Crime, Mystery, Thriller
When the police in a German city are unable to catch a child-murderer, other criminals join in the manhunt.
Director: Fritz Lang | Stars: Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut, Otto Wernicke
Votes: 168,309 | Gross: $0.03M
Fritz Lang's true masterpiece.
13. Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Not Rated | 89 min | Drama
In post-war Italy, a working-class man's bicycle is stolen, endangering his efforts to find work. He and his son set out to find it.
Director: Vittorio De Sica | Stars: Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carell, Elena Altieri
Votes: 174,999 | Gross: $0.33M
The signature film of the Italian Neoreorealism movement, and the best film in the history of the nation. No small statement.
14. The Third Man (1949)
Approved | 93 min | Film-Noir, Mystery, Thriller
Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime.
Director: Carol Reed | Stars: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard
Votes: 181,714 | Gross: $0.45M
One of the few Orson Welles films that isn't grossly overrated.
15. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
PG | 161 min | Adventure, Drama, War
British POWs are forced to build a railway bridge across the river Kwai for their Japanese captors in occupied Burma, not knowing that the allied forces are planning a daring commando raid through the jungle to destroy it.
Director: David Lean | Stars: William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa
Votes: 233,120 | Gross: $44.91M
In between his over-romanticized tales of slice-of-life banality (Hobson's Choice, Brief Encounter) and personality (Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago) he made a lone film that precisely balanced tone, topic, and length. To risk dumbing down or exaggerating the moral of the story in existential terms, there comes moments in a man's life when purpose alone is a matter of survival. A moment that most of us never face or live up to. As with most of his work, the first decades in particular, the film seeps a subtext of contradictory pride and irony concerning what it means to be British.
16. Andrei Rublev (1966)
R | 189 min | Biography, Drama, History
The life, times and afflictions of the fifteenth-century Russian iconographer St. Andrei Rublev.
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky | Stars: Anatoliy Solonitsyn, Ivan Lapikov, Nikolay Grinko, Nikolay Sergeev
Votes: 57,008 | Gross: $0.10M
I normally detest overlong, plotless, b & w art-house movies, but Andrei Tarkovsky deserves the utmost respect for his remorseless portrayal of Russian history. Andrei Rublev is more like a Grimm fairy tale.
17. The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Not Rated | 121 min | Drama, War
In the 1950s, fear and violence escalate as the people of Algiers fight for independence from the French government.
Director: Gillo Pontecorvo | Stars: Brahim Hadjadj, Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi, Samia Kerbash
Votes: 65,587 | Gross: $0.06M
The greatest and most truthful portrayal of terrorism/irredentism; which would increasingly turn out to be the defining topic of debate in international politics the last hundred years. You could call this the defining film of the Twentieth Century on such terms.
18. The Virgin Spring (1960)
Not Rated | 89 min | Drama
In 14th-century Sweden, an innocent yet pampered teenage girl and her family's pregnant and jealous servant set out from their farm to deliver candles to church, but only one returns from events that transpire in the woods along the way.
Director: Ingmar Bergman | Stars: Max von Sydow, Birgitta Valberg, Gunnel Lindblom, Birgitta Pettersson
Votes: 31,618 | Gross: $1.53M
19. Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Approved | 137 min | Drama, Horror
A young couple trying for a baby moves into an aging, ornate apartment building on Central Park West, where they find themselves surrounded by peculiar neighbors.
Director: Roman Polanski | Stars: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer
Votes: 234,858
Showing that persistence indeed pays off, the schlock-gimmick merchant William Castle finally produced one of the greatest horror classics after twenty-something years in the B-movie biz.
20. The Killing Fields (1984)
R | 141 min | Biography, Drama, History
A journalist is trapped in Cambodia during tyrant Pol Pot's bloody 'Year Zero' cleansing campaign, which claimed the lives of two million 'undesirable' civilians.
Director: Roland Joffé | Stars: Sam Waterston, Haing S. Ngor, John Malkovich, Julian Sands
Votes: 59,072 | Gross: $34.70M
Apropos of nothing, I just now realize the black irony of the use of John Lennon's atheistic-utopian song 'Imagine,' in a film where the film chronicles a real-life attempted utopia built literally on the concept of banishing all trace of religion, where people were actually freed from their possessions living in a false 'brotherhood of man.' A nightmare in which people to this day try to forget their agony and impotence in stopping the deaths of millions of their fellow innocent civilians. Sorry, I guess I just ruined that song, didn't I.
21. The French Connection (1971)
R | 104 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A pair of NYPD detectives in the Narcotics Bureau stumble onto a heroin smuggling ring based in Marseilles, but stopping them and capturing their leaders proves an elusive goal.
Director: William Friedkin | Stars: Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey, Tony Lo Bianco
Votes: 135,523 | Gross: $15.63M
Effectively killed off the noir-inflected crime genre, an archetype begging to be put out of its misery. Friedkin's characters are deadpan and lack any semblance of romanticism. This is in a sense, a satirical version of Dragnet, but it still about a million times better than Altman's hipster Philip Marlowe. Which, to complete the metaphor, is closer to classic noir's death rattle.
22. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)
Approved | 112 min | Drama, Thriller
Instead of coming in from the Cold War, British agent Alec Leamas chooses to face another mission.
Director: Martin Ritt | Stars: Richard Burton, Oskar Werner, Claire Bloom, Sam Wanamaker
Votes: 18,794
Richard Burton specialized in three things, starring in great movies, starring in bad movies, and drinking. Somehow I think the last two are connected, in any case, he managed to dry out long enough to give his best performance in this dry but haunting tale of a footnote in the Cold War. As Herman Melville recognized, there is no tale too small as long as it involves great passion and questioning what it means to be human.
23. Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
R | 119 min | Drama, Romance
A scheming widow and her manipulative ex-lover make a bet regarding the corruption of a recently married woman.
Director: Stephen Frears | Stars: Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Michelle Pfeiffer, Swoosie Kurtz
Votes: 75,080 | Gross: $34.70M
A better skewering of the '1 percent' than even Bunuel could dream up.
24. The Men (1950)
Passed | 87 min | Drama
A paralyzed war vet tries to adjust to the world without the use of his limbs.
Director: Fred Zinnemann | Stars: Marlon Brando, Teresa Wright, Everett Sloane, Jack Webb
Votes: 5,095 | Gross: $7.10M
Less heralded if only because of The Best Years of our Lives' Oscar win three years prior, Brando screen's debut is so good that today it tends to overshadow Fred Zinneman's superb direction and an Oscar-nominated script.
25. The Prisoner (1955)
Not Rated | 91 min | Drama
A Cardinal is arrested for treason against the state. As a Prince of his church, he's a popular hero of this people for his resistance against the Nazis during the war, and his resistance ... See full summary »
Director: Peter Glenville | Stars: Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Wilfrid Lawson, Kenneth Griffith
Votes: 1,124
Interesting if at very least for sympathizing its hypocrite protagonist and the tool-of-the-state torturing him into a false confession.
26. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)
R | 113 min | Biography, Comedy, Crime
An adaptation of the cult memoir of game show impresario Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell), in which he purports to have been a C.I.A. hitman.
Director: George Clooney | Stars: Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, George Clooney, Julia Roberts
Votes: 91,952 | Gross: $16.00M
George Clooney's lone great directorial effort, C.o.a.D.M. is also the kind of absurd, surrealist drama that the Coen Bros. and Steven Soderbergh have based their entire career trying to make, to more or less no avail. Clooney got it on his first try.
27. Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985)
PG | 91 min | Adventure, Comedy, Family
When eccentric man-child Pee-wee Herman gets his beloved bike stolen in broad daylight, he sets out across the U.S. on the adventure of his life.
Director: Tim Burton | Stars: Paul Reubens, Elizabeth Daily, Mark Holton, Diane Salinger
Votes: 59,047 | Gross: $40.90M
An unconventional road picture that put both Paul Reubens and Tim Burton on the map, noteworthy for also being co-written by pre-SNL Phil Hartman, the film is considered a PG kids movie but is equally watchable for adults with its slapstick, satire of Hollywood, and self-aware comedy. Best remembered for its silly character and the 'Tequila dance' scene, but the nightmare segment, in which clowns dressed as surgeons dissect his beloved bicycle is the one moment that has long resided in my subconscious.
28. Fatal Attraction (1987)
R | 119 min | Drama, Thriller
A married man's one-night stand comes back to haunt him when that lover begins to stalk him and his family.
Director: Adrian Lyne | Stars: Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, Anne Archer, Ellen Latzen
Votes: 96,981 | Gross: $156.65M
Say what you want about Adrian Lyne's career (redundant and sparse) or style (over-sexualized), he's one of the few directors who has managed to make consistently intelligent, erotic, quality movies over the last thirty years. His films are lurid but are never churned out like Danielle Steel novels.
29. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972)
R | 88 min | Comedy
Seven stories are trying to answer the question: what is sex? Or maybe they are not trying.
Director: Woody Allen | Stars: Woody Allen, Gene Wilder, Louise Lasser, John Carradine
Votes: 41,744
An irreverent, pretention-free comedy across the bow of America struggling to make sense of a cultural sea-change. Just as the idea of sexual & artistic experimentation and liberation threatened to become annoyingly serious and arsty (I Am Curious Yellow), exploitative (Last House on the Left), schlocky and trite (every youth-oriented movie of the era), Woody Allen was there to deflate it in its tracks.
30. The Power and the Glory (1933)
Passed | 76 min | Drama
The tragic life story of a power-hungry industrialist is recounted in the aftermath of his death.
Director: William K. Howard | Stars: Spencer Tracy, Colleen Moore, Ralph Morgan, Helen Vinson
Votes: 732
If Preston Sturges was more courageous, or thought that he had any money to win, he'd probably have sued Orson Welles for stealing his plot and theme of his original story. It seems tragic that the inspiration for one of the most acclaimed films of all time is little seen (by critics or fans, at 347 user ratings, this remains a 'lost film' still) and has a only a lowly 'seven'.
31. Kippur (2000)
Not Rated | 117 min | Drama, War
When the Yom Kippur War breaks out, two Israeli soldiers find themselves unable to locate their unit. Eager to take part in the war effort, they join an airborne medical evacuation unit.
Director: Amos Gitai | Stars: Liron Levo, Tomer Russo, Uri Klauzner, Yoram Hattab
Votes: 1,891 | Gross: $0.11M
32. American Gigolo (1980)
R | 117 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
A Los Angeles escort is accused of a murder which he did not commit.
Director: Paul Schrader | Stars: Richard Gere, Lauren Hutton, Hector Elizondo, Nina van Pallandt
Votes: 29,403 | Gross: $23.00M
It's easy to forget, but Richard Gere owned Hollywood in the early Eighties playing beautiful cretins with hearts o' gold. Unfortunately that kinda typecasted him as a bimbo and his career has been erratic since that peak. This is arguably his most magnetic performance. Today the evil gay pimp would be predictably called a negative homophobic stereotype while back then no one cared. In some ways the film is more edgy today than it was then.
33. White Sands (1992)
R | 101 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A small southwestern town Sheriff finds a body in the desert with a suitcase and five hundred thousand dollars. He impersonates the man and stumbles into an F.B.I. investigation.
Director: Roger Donaldson | Stars: Willem Dafoe, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Mickey Rourke, Samuel L. Jackson
Votes: 8,875 | Gross: $9.01M
An entertaining thriller with a great cast.
34. Manufacturing Dissent (2007)
R | 97 min | Documentary
A documentary that looks to distinguish what's fact, fiction, legend, and otherwise as a camera crew trails Michael Moore while he tours with his film Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004).
Directors: Rick Caine, Debbie Melnyk | Stars: Michael Moore, Debbie Melnyk, Rick Caine, Dave Barber
Votes: 2,153
It takes obscure Canadians to expose America's leading political provocateur as the embarrassing, hypocritical sham he is. Go figure.
35. The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)
R | 92 min | Horror
A mad scientist kidnaps and mutilates a trio of tourists in order to reassemble them into a human centipede, created by stitching their mouths to each others' rectums.
Director: Tom Six | Stars: Dieter Laser, Winter Williams, Ashlynn Yennie, Akihiro Kitamura
Votes: 87,170 | Gross: $0.18M
Anytime a horror film can make you sick to your stomach or pique your interest without gore or nudity it deserves a little credit.
36. Raging Bull (1980)
R | 129 min | Biography, Drama, Sport
The life of boxer Jake LaMotta, whose violence and temper that led him to the top in the ring destroyed his life outside of it.
Director: Martin Scorsese | Stars: Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci, Frank Vincent
Votes: 379,812 | Gross: $23.38M
8.3 doesn't seem low, until you consider that this picture is Martin Scorsese's most powerful. And I think there is some guy named De Niro in it, who isn't too bad either.
37. The Thin Blue Line (1988)
Not Rated | 101 min | Documentary, Crime
A film that successfully argued that a man was wrongly convicted for murder by a corrupt justice system in Dallas County, Texas.
Director: Errol Morris | Stars: Randall Adams, David Harris, Gus Rose, Jackie Johnson
Votes: 25,876 | Gross: $1.21M
Most widely known for spurring the release of Randall Dale Adams from prison, it in the process cast doubt on the validity of the death penalty and the legal system that (either through incompetence or malevolence) perpetuated such a travesty. There's certainly no hospitality like Southern hospitality.
38. The Fugitive (1947)
Approved | 104 min | Drama, History
Anti-Catholic and anti-cleric policies in the Mexican state of Tabasco lead the revolutionary government to persecute the state's last remaining priest.
Directors: John Ford, Emilio Fernández | Stars: Henry Fonda, Dolores Del Río, Pedro Armendáriz, J. Carrol Naish
Votes: 2,585
This is another film so underrated it makes you scratch your head. The customary complaints of slow pacing, a downbeat tone, sad ending, religiosity, divergence from source material, or lack of an ability to relate to the social issues or moral dilemmas are understandable but petty. The film is a historically accurate, deeply personal meditation by John Ford on spirituality and belief, that is not to say necessarily religion but something equally intangible. A film, I assume, is too abstract and restrained for evangelicals and too symbolic and 'churchy' for secular viewers.
39. Big Fan (2009)
R | 88 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama
A hard-core New York Giants fan struggles to deal with the consequences when he is beaten up by his favorite player.
Director: Robert Siegel | Stars: Patton Oswalt, Kevin Corrigan, Michael Rapaport, Marcia Jean Kurtz
Votes: 9,859 | Gross: $0.23M
Sometimes it takes a while for a movie's cleverness to seep in. I assume people who voted this a '5' or under thought they were going to see a baby-proofed Apatow-styled 'bro' comedy where the fat, goofy loser has some slapstick, non-threatening adventures, says something poignant at the end that shows he is a good guy, and gets a girl out of his league. You should expect more from a comic as smart as Patton Oswald, an underrated social critic in his own right.
40. The Verdict (1982)
R | 129 min | Drama
An outcast, alcoholic Boston lawyer sees the chance to salvage his career and self-respect by taking a medical malpractice case to trial rather than settling.
Director: Sidney Lumet | Stars: Paul Newman, Charlotte Rampling, Jack Warden, James Mason
Votes: 45,932 | Gross: $54.00M
Sidney Lumet, Paul Newman, Charlotte Rampling, Jack Warden, James Mason, and David Mamet at the top of their game. Other than the admitted predictability of the plot, the film is flawless.
41. The Misfits (1961)
Not Rated | 125 min | Drama, Romance, Western
A divorcée falls for an over-the-hill cowboy who is struggling to maintain his romantically independent lifestyle.
Director: John Huston | Stars: Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter
Votes: 23,380 | Gross: $8.94M
The beaten-down, desperate look on the actors' faces and words is more real than feigned. None of the main cast would live longer than five years after the western's release, having all lived with enough heart ache, medical problems, addiction, and abandonment issues for several lifetimes.
42. Run Silent Run Deep (1958)
Approved | 93 min | Action, Drama, War
A U.S. sub commander, obsessed with sinking a certain Japanese ship, butts heads with his first officer and crew.
Director: Robert Wise | Stars: Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster, Jack Warden, Brad Dexter
Votes: 13,097
43. I Live in Fear (1955)
103 min | Drama
An aging Japanese industrialist becomes so fearful of nuclear war that it begins to take a toll on his life and family.
Director: Akira Kurosawa | Stars: Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki, Eiko Miyoshi
Votes: 5,530
Akira Kurosawa would merit respect as one of Japan's greatest filmmakers if he had only made this film. The central protagonist, an untrusting, paternalistic recluse, a living symbol of a kind of spiritual-PTSD. Though to reduce the plot and character solely to those narrow of readings is doing the movie no justice.
44. The Hunter (IV) (2011)
R | 100 min | Adventure, Drama, Thriller
Martin, a mercenary, is sent from Europe by a mysterious biotech company to the Tasmanian wilderness on a hunt for the last Tasmanian tiger.
Director: Daniel Nettheim | Stars: Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill, Morgan Davies, Jacek Koman
Votes: 41,149 | Gross: $0.18M
To risk spoiling the film I'll spell it out for everyone who had difficulty swallowing the ending. -- For anyone who's never seen it, stop reading.
He's a big game hunter, to posses a kill that no other living person can or ever will claim is the ultimate trophy! Stop asking why he shot it, that's the character the film has spent two hours telling us he is. The guilt he possibly feels (the widow is undoubtably a metaphor for the 'extinct' species, or vice versa) is part of the reason he goes against that nature to comfort the widow's son. He feels remorse because he has humanity, bags the trophy and seeks revenge because he's only human.
45. The Star Chamber (1983)
R | 109 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
Frustrated with a legal system gone haywire, a secret society of judges hires hitmen to snuff out criminals who escape courtroom justice - but one young judge questions the ethics of their vigilante system.
Director: Peter Hyams | Stars: Michael Douglas, Hal Holbrook, Yaphet Kotto, Sharon Gless
Votes: 7,725 | Gross: $5.56M
Considering the critical acclaim that the revenge-fantasy t.v. show Dexter has warranted, The Star Chamber deserves at least as much recognition for its maturity and for not falling into the trap that forensics and a 'real cop' unrestrained by red tape can and should be expected to solve every crime. While the film is written off as formulaic Hollywood fare by many -- one look at its misleading and mindlessly thrown-together poster and who can blame them -- if you look under the surface you can detect a subversive side to this simple morality tale of right and wrong.
The film expresses clear doubts in a justice system burdened by heavy-handed police tactics, outright incompetence, complicated by a media out for a narrative that sticks or blood, personal and social bias, and the caprice of coincidence. Further, the film deserves some credit for mocking our own cynical impulse for vigilante justice (on and off screen) and belief in our ability to discern truth, traits shared by the most godly right-winger and liberal anti-death penalty opponent alike. Points inexplicably lost on a lot of critics (I love Roger Ebert, but I have no idea how he missed the point of the film), who seem to have seen the film purely as a procedural. It isn't perfect but its smarter and more daring than most crime pictures, which ought to at least merit higher than a 6.3.
46. Dead Calm (1989)
R | 96 min | Horror, Thriller
After a tragedy, John Ingram and his wife Rae are spending some time isolated at sea, when they come across a stranger who has abandoned a sinking ship.
Director: Phillip Noyce | Stars: Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill, Billy Zane, Rod Mullinar
Votes: 43,646 | Gross: $7.83M
IMDb message-board participants seem more interested on the sex scene than anything else, which might explain why the finer points might be lost on those who only see it as a low-budget popcorn movie. Granted it is over-the-top at times, it is also a gorgeously shot, perfectly casted, and proficiently executed thriller. Although the film appears very similar to Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley and the equally minimalist & sexually tense film Knife in the Water, Dead Calm was based on a unrelated American novel and takes a very different turn than both. An obscure, engaging, creepy, Aussie gem, either for a date movie or random basic cable filler you can't do much better.
Tell Your Friends