By Leo Milmet
After having a great time polling the Blog Staff on the films they find totally underseen and underrated, I now go back to doing what I do best: recommending movies I think are underseen by my viewers. Try these on for size.
Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997): This film is one of Tarantino’s best, most restrained (and yet most inherently stylistic) films ever. An ensemble crime film about a cool-as-a-cat airplane stewardess and the federal agents and criminals she’s constantly double-crossing at every turn.
Pleasantville (Gary Ross, 1998): A beautiful, vibrant, and meaningful film about the dark side of the relationship between a perceived utopia and real life. Featuring some truly beautiful cinematography by John Lindley.
Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004): A visually unique action film featuring Tom Cruise in a rare villainous role as a hitman who hires a cabbie named Max to take him through Los Angeles in a hellish night of gritty violence, amazing dialogues about jiving jazz music, and, ultimately, moral discovery.
Green Room (Jeremy Saulnier, 2015): A bleak, brutal, grimy, nail-biting thriller about a death metal band caught in a terrible situation. Saulnier creates suspense and tension in this film, and the payoff doesn’t disappoint either.
mother! (Darren Aronofsky, 2017): A thrilling, dark fable with deep roots in mythology that often comes off like the mad ramblings of a genius. This brilliantly written, maddeningly intense nail-biter is one of last year’s best films, featuring a phenomenal, agonizingly intense performance by Jennifer Lawrence.
Do The Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989): A powerful, vibrant, and snappily written ensemble film exploring race relations in Brooklyn in the 1980s. The film’s slow burn towards its famously masterful, brilliantly controversial climax is absolutely incredible, and the acting, especially the performances of Danny Aiello, Spike Lee, and John Turturro, is near-perfect. This film is absolutely one of the best ever made.
One, Two, Three (Billy Wilder, 1961): Clearly one of the of the fastest-paced films ever made, this action-packed, satirical masterpiece by Billy Wilder is one of the best comedies of the ‘60s. Featuring James Cagney in a phenomenal role as the selfish, red-white-and-blue-blooded Coca-Cola executive C.R. MacNamara stationed in West Berlin during the time of the city’s separation.
Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971): A sweet little dark comedy about Harold, a young man obsessed with death, who finds meaning in life through a deep newfound love for Maude, a vibrant, life-loving, seventy-nine-year-old woman.
My Dinner With André (Louis Malle, 1981): An eloquent, philosophical conversation between two men with fascinating mindsets about things most people never even stop to think about represents the majority of this film. Featuring some of the best dialogue ever committed to celluloid, written and delivered on-screen by Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory.
Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005): A subtle, slow-paced thriller, and a disturbing one at that, this film concerns a man and his wife who are sent eerie VHS tapes of their house. It offers a fascinating look at the dark side of human relationships, and how the demons of one man’s past can affect his whole family in the future.
Editor: Holden Hartle
Great choices. One of my best friends, John Kilik, was the Producer of Pleasantville. I believe he was the Location Manager on Do The Right Thing, which led to several years of being Spike Lee’s producer.
Several years ago I screened Harold and Maude for the Film Club, It did not go over all that well – nonetheless it was a meaningful film for me in my youth.
Cache: brilliant.