October 19, 2005
The Onion AV Club has put up a list of what they think are the most underrated films of the last decade. They picked a surprising number of films on my own version of that list: American Psycho, Solaris, Trouble Every Day, Session 9, Velvet Goldmine, and Lost Highway. I don't think that Office Space really qualifies - I understand no one saw it in the theaters, but it's pretty universally hailed now - less underrated, more poorly marketed.
But seriously: The Cable Guy, The Newton Boys, Bringing Out the Dead, Carrie 2, A.I., and not one but two M. Night Shyamalan films? Did they watch these films?
In order, they are either a.) evidence of a certain star's slide into hacktacularity and not as funny as it might have seemed at the time (and just barely then), b.) a crappy TV movie hiding in the guise of a theatrical release with a bunch of otherwise good actors underperforming; c.) a Martin Scorsese film as Martin Scorsese parody (and one of the only films I've ever truly wanted to walk out of; d.) a low-grade, unnecessary remake masked as a sequel; e.) an uninteresting, overlong mess that makes the idea of androids/robots (which, like ninjas, should always be awesome) boring; and f.) lame attempts by a director to recapture the success of an earlier film by retreading the same tricks.
I'd argue those films are actually quite overrated, especially considering how often most of them are held up as underrated (except for The Newton Boys and Carrie 2, which most people/critics/lists rightly ignore).
I'd suggest that Super Troopers is underrated, but I have a hard time convincing many of my friends of this fact (no, really, it gets funnier each time). I think True Romance is the best thing Quentin Tarantino's name has ever been attached to, though I'm not sure it's quite underrated (and is a few years early for this list). Both the 25th Hour and Bamboozled were pretty fantastic efforts by Spike Lee (even if the latter has a few missteps). I think Nightwatch was far better and scarier than people give it credit for (and the "it's obvious who the killer is" complaint misses the point, I think). Julien Donkey-Boy and Jesus' Son are both films I don't see enough about, as are The Devil's Backbone, Ratcatcher, George Washington, and All the Real Girls. Oh, yeah, and Reign of Fire, which was AWESOME. It had DRAGONS, people, and Matthew McConaughey as a live-action GI Joe.
There's a much larger list that Chud put up a year and half ago that I'd recommend checking out. I found some pretty great stuff from it, including a little-known, little-seen (but great) film from the writer of The Exorcist called The Ninth Configuration.
Anything else I should be seeing that maybe I don't know about?
Posted by starlen at October 19, 2005 7:56 AM
