Underrated Movies

The Battery is a decent take on the Zombie movie that no one seems to mention.

I recently saw a couple of great movies on Netflix. Wheelman is an excellent take on the getaway driver trope. I really enjoyed the camera work on this one as the it is filmed in and on the car at all times and the camera never leaves it. It's a bit sweary though, so not one to watch with a young family. Upgrade was a really well made action movie too.

I also saw a movie called White Space which was a lot of fun. Nothing original (it's essentially Moby Dick in space), but it was a well done movie. I described it as a B-Movie on another forum, but i do it an injustice, really.

I also think that non-English movies are a refreshing antidote to the ennui of Hollywood.

I'd recommend Cargo, (a decent Swiss-German Sci-Fi movie), Train to Busan (Korea Zombie movie), Chrysalis (a very competent action movie from France).

I still have to watch Delicatessen, Rec, Alive and The Platform.
 
Cargo isn't bad for a dumb SF movie but it does require some serious disbelief suspension. My first annoyance - as with all films in which this happens - is the huge (essentially cargo) ship flying through interstellar space that has the WHOLE of its interior filled with pressured atmosphere kept warm enough not to freeze and fall to the ground like snow. This is a phenomenal waste of effort and energy which just gets on my tits every time I encounter it. And the big engines firing all the time for four years! They only cut out about 30 seconds before they reach their destination; at which point the ship just stops (once the engines stop pushing it). At some point this ship goes FLT. It has to. Rhea, its destination, is 'four years' away from Earth. Proxima Centuri is about 4.2 light-years from us. So, even if Rhea is around our nearest neighbour - and the implication is that it isn't - then the ship, the Kassandra, must have gone faster than light to get there in that time. As it was constantly accelerating, when it got to Station 42 (aka Matrix in Space) it would have been doing at least lightspeed and would have accumulated enough relativistic mass to destroy the whole bloody planet as it hit.

When one of these "nominated" films induces someone of the forum's readership to watch... well it would be fun if they noted what they thought of the production in question by replying to the post in this thread.
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The Big Empty that I bought off eBay has arrived and is next in my To Be Watched pile.
 
Windshadow,
"Pinnacle" of the Ealing film? As great as your two are, my taste would have to pick out a couple of others, as fellow pinnacles. The Lavender Hill Mob & The Ladykillers
I could have listed more. Sadly (for me) when I looked at a list of Ealings, I also discovered how many I had not seen.
Also intended to list The Wrong Arm of the Law as a lovely classic Ealing farce - but discovered to my surprise that someone else had made it.

I have an exceptionally difficult time listing "bests", so I like your using "pinnacle". Particularly when comparing quality, it's often apples and persimmons so I can't rank them. The classic case of that (for me) is ranking Alec Guinness creations. Each one outstanding, but often for different reasons.

To JM re the previous post. Haven't seen it. Your specifics are such that it would annoy the ____ out of me also. Perhaps Cargo should be on the Verrrry bad thread?
 
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Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I was disappointed with this film when I first saw it in 1980. It didn't have the action I expected from the television series. I've since watched it many times and realise that it's a thoughtful science fiction film that tried to elevate the characters from their original television roles. While I still agree that Wrath of Khan is the best ST film I think TMP rates in the top five at least.
 
pogopossum said:
Windshadow,
"Pinnacle" of the Ealing film? As great as your two are, my taste would have to pick out a couple of others, as fellow pinnacles. The Lavender Hill Mob & The Ladykillers
I could have listed more. Sadly (for me) when I looked at a list of Ealings, I also discovered how many I had not seen.
Also intended to list The Wrong Arm of the Law as a lovely classic Ealing farce - but discovered to my surprise that someone else had made it.

I have an exceptionally difficult time listing "bests", so I like your using "pinnacle". Particularly when comparing quality, often it's often apples and persimmons so I can't rank them. The classic case of that (for me) is ranking Alec Guiness creations. Each one outstanding, but often for different reasons.

To JM re the previous post. Haven't seen it. Your specifics are such that it would annoy the ____ out of me also. Perhaps Cargo should be on the Verrrry bad thread?
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Yep lots of space at the top of the hill that is 1950s film from the UK. It was used on late night early morning USA TV for well into the 1970s when many low power UHF local stations would run them... some times with amusing hosts or hostesses and sadly sometimes cut about and damaged via bad splicing for the 16mm film chain systems they tended to use I once had a full reel of another film turn up in the middle of the Ronald Coalman Prisoner of Zenda and the drunken host on channel 38 never noticed....
Pogo Do let me know if you ever watch Our Man in Havana
www.imdb.com

Our Man in Havana (1959) ⭐ 7.2 | Comedy, Crime, Drama

1h 51m | Not Rated
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
 
Saw Havana years ago. Following recent posts I did try to find it.
It's streaming on Amazon for $3, but no subscription. I'll track it down.
 
Even the "B list films " are a lot of fun... the first of the St. Trinians films about a girls school run by Alistair Sim in drag is rather above the B list level but later films in the series pull the level down a bit... this happens quite a bit wherever films are made. The Mouse that Roared for example is great fun with Peter Sellers playing multiple parts... but it’s sequel The Mouse on the Moon was a disappointment from the script to some of the acting. Though it fairly can be considered underrated and if looked at from the aspect it’s early Dr. Who level of sets and SFX it is quite an interesting look at the start of Science Fiction films of that period in the UK.
 
pogopossum said:
To JM re the previous post. Haven't seen it. Your specifics are such that it would annoy the ____ out of me also. Perhaps Cargo should be on the Verrrry bad thread?
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Oh No! I wouldn't put it in the V Bad category it's just not as good as it could have been. The giant spaceships full of air thing is just one of those lapses that grate but I have had to come to accept. It was particularly annoying in the case of Cargo (and I'm working from memory it's a few years since I've seen it) because it becomes an obvious plot hole. There are stowaways aboard the ship - somewhere in the vast atmosphere-filled pointlessly-heated hold - and instead of just turning the heating off and freezing the stowaways out (or to death) a painstaking search is organised. It's just dumb. But, to paraphrase what Hitchcock said to James Stewart when he asked why his vertigo-suffering character would climb that open staircase in the bell tower, "Because we don't have a f%&£ng movie if you don't."

Thinks: It's a good job I didn't mention the girl in the space suit jet-packing at speed into a moving spaceship from the side (90 degrees) without matching velocities first...
 
^To JM,
:DAppreciate your correction.
You made me think of the well known story The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin. As dour a piece as could be written. Looking it up, I see that it is also an episode of the 1985 Twilight Zone. I think that I'll skip it and go with yours if I get a chance.
 
Sundays and Cybele


The Reluctant Saint


The River


The Burmese Harp

 
Windshadow said:
www.imdb.com

Outland (1981) ⭐ 6.6 | Action, Crime, Sci-Fi

1h 49m | R
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
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Outland (1981)
Sean Connery in Outland (1981)
Rotten Tomatoes gives this a meta score in the 50s but for its date, I thought its effects stood up well it had an interesting plot if rather too obviously a recycled western script... I found most strange that it was hammered for it casting a Scotsman as the marshal... a recurring trope for almost any Sean Connery performance (see the reviews of "The Hunt for Red October" and "The Wind and the Lion" and "The Lion in Winter" to mention just a few but this strange criticism crops up even when he gives other excellent performances in films like "The Man Who Would Be King" another one of my favorites of his.
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covered Outland on the first page of these and don't forget very good work from Peter Boyle as the boss and Frances Sternhagen as the doctor.
 
I got round to watching The Big Empty the other day.

It was OK but not a missed gem.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

I think my biggest problem with it was the big slow David Lynch Lite build up of the mysterious and dangerous 'Cowboy' utterly deflated when he finally arrives. It turns out he is played by Sean Bean. Nice looking fellow Sean Bean and I'm sure he's great fun to be with but I've never really found him convincing in anything I've seen him in and he was terribly miscast here. He just wasn't dangerous, weird, or menacing or.. well anything. It was just Sean Bean reading lines. The film fell flat on its face for me when he arrived and it never really got back up. Sorry.
 
Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991).
Harley_davidson_and_the_marlboro_man_movie_poster.jpg

I doubt any of you have seen this odd film but it's one I've always enjoyed. Ostensibly it's a sci-fi action thriller (very low sci-fi) but it has a vibe that I've always found very cyberpunk. Little guy against big corpos and such. Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson are surprisingly charismatic in this film and it clips along at a fair pace. As long as you don't expect it to change your life it's not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.
 
A year old.
I am sure that many current members have not seen this thread.
Unless you are a detail person, don't worry about going back through the pages.
"Repetition is the soul of admiration." (Just made that one up.)

To re-start:

This actually received some nominations as well as a lot of scorn. I liked the tone and treatment of politicos. Usually don't like Dicaprio.
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Loved the ending.
 
And continuing the (I hope) revival of this somewhat necro thread.
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It is widely recognized as a quality film. It is only underrated when it is not recognized as one of the best SFs ever made. No flash, little action. Dramatic but in a cerebral way. Very well acted, but with little for the actors to react to. One of the very best translations of an SF written piece - that is of the highest quality itself.
Aliens who actually SEEM alien, not exaggerations of human characteristics.
It won the Hugo in its year and was nominated for the Best film Oscar. Still underrated.
 
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