Underrated Movies

It's hard for me to know what constitutes an underrated film because I can't really distinguish where 'underrated' segues into 'forgotten', or 'cult', or 'personal favourites that no one else likes'.

But here's a couple...

Young Einstein - Yahoo Serious plays Tasmanian apple farmer, Albert Einstein who discovers the secret of splitting beer atoms and a new musical form,"Roll and Rock". With the help of the love of his life, French scientist Marie Curie, Albert manages to diffuse the atomic bomb unscrupulous German brewers have made with his formula by plugging an electric guitar into it and laying down some righteous riffs. Why this isn't on everyone's top ten comedy films I don't know, but it isn't, so it's underrated.
young-einstein-lg.jpg



Mystery Men - A Superhero movie that Windshadow might enjoy. Seven wannabee, not very good superheroes band together to rescue the only really good superhero the city has from the clutches of bad guy Casanova Frankenstein.
Mystery-Men-DI.jpg

It's got a great cast - William Macy as 'The Shoveller' is particularly perfect. Structurally it's a mess and the jokes are hit and miss all over the place but it's so much FUN. Probably my second favourite superhero movie after the 1966 Batman.
 
JunkMonkey said:
It's hard for me to know what constitutes an underrated film because I can't really distinguish where 'underrated' segues into 'forgotten', or 'cult', or 'personal favourites that no one else likes'.

But here's a couple...

Young Einstein - Yahoo Serious plays Tasmanian apple farmer, Albert Einstein who discovers the secret of splitting beer atoms and a new musical form,"Roll and Rock". With the help of the love of his life, French scientist Marie Curie, Albert manages to diffuse the atomic bomb unscrupulous German brewers have made with his formula by plugging an electric guitar into it and laying down some righteous riffs. Why this isn't on everyone's top ten comedy films I don't know, but it isn't, so it's underrated.
young-einstein-lg.jpg



Mystery Men - A Superhero movie that Windshadow might enjoy. Seven wannabees, not very good superheroes band together to rescue the only really good superhero the city has from the clutches of bad guy Casanova Frankenstein.
Mystery-Men-DI.jpg

It's got a great cast - William Macy as 'The Shoveller' is particularly perfect. Structurally it's a mess and the jokes are hit and miss all over the place but it's so much FUN. Probably my second favorite superhero movie after the 1966 Batman.
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Thanks for the tips, neither of these have I seen, I was aware of the first only as something to be avoided at the time... due to the star being a very bad actor in the reviews. as to Mystery Men I have not heard of it before now... it does not seem to be on any of the streaming services but it can be rented via Amazon prime for $4 sit goes into the future to be watched file.
 
Windshadow said:
Thanks for the tips, neither of these have I seen, I was aware of the first only as something to be avoided at the time... due to the star being a very bad actor in the reviews. as to Mystery Men I have not heard of it before now... it does not seem to be on any of the streaming services but it can be rented via Amazon prime for $4 sit goes into the future to be watched file.
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Save your money, Windshadow. It's an interesting take on superheroes but wait until it's part of one of your streaming services. Don't pay extra.
 
I particularly liked (quoting Wikipedia),
"Paul Reubens as Spleen, a superhero whose flatulence makes others faint."

"Underrated." Obviously could mean lotsa different things. So let er rip.
 
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OK Pogo. are we sure your handle should be is not "Farts Like Skunk"?
 
?
I know that I'm an old fart, but I don't quite follow you.
Possums do have a number of disgusting habits. It's only fictional ones invented by Connecticut newspapermen that show great wisdom and polite bathroom habits.

edit: Re-read the above. The "Let er rip" above was an unitentional reference. My subconscious seems to be funnier than anything deliberate.
 
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I'm late to this thread, so don't know (without investing more time than I have just this minute) if any of these are duplicates. It is also never clear exactly what "under-rated" signifies. (Links are to the IMDB page for the film.)

The Big Empty [2003 film, not the 1997 P.I. movie]
Stalker [Tarkovsky]
X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes [Roger Corman]
Carnival of Souls [1962 edition, black & white, not the terrible remake]
Flash Gordon [1980 version] (an absolute hoot)
The Last Starfighter (rises above its apparent target)
Harvey [TV, DuPont Show of the Month: Season 2, Episode 1, 22 Sep. 1958; available on DVD c. $15]
(vastly better than the Jimmy Stewart movie)
Black Orpheus [Brazilian; amazing sound track]
The Quiet Earth [New Zealand]
The Bothersome Man [Norwegian]
Angel-A [black & white, French]

Some others, possibly better known:

The Thief of Bagdad [black & white, silent; get the restored Blu-ray version]
Beauty and the Beast [Jean Cocteau, black & white, 1946: beware other like-named films]
Orphée [Jean Cocteau, black & white, French]
Alphaville [black comedy, Jean-Luc Godard, French]

See here for further movie thoughts.
 
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[QUOTE="Windshadow"
Disco Beaver from Outer Space
[/QUOTE]
Wow. Looked it up. After a couple of bad experiences w. Nat Lampoon, had decided to not watch them.
Will try to find this one.

And thank you Owlcraft. Followed your link. As Windshadow commented in another context (paraphrase), the site is a rabbit hole of a depth that I can't afford to jump into. still have a non-streaming life. (but I would add, I may not be able to resist.)
 
l_1c50b5f2-7946-4b1b-8377-9ac4f61b56f7.jpg

Tomorrowland (2015).
I don't know why this film didn't do better. The cast and effects were marvellous with many in jokes for sci-fi fans and a story with a positive message. It should have become a franchise but it fizzled out completely. I love it so much I've picked up what little merchandise I could.
 
pogopossum said:
Wow. Looked it up. After a couple of bad experiences w. Nat Lampoon, had decided to not watch them.
Will try to find this one.
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it does fall into that "it is so bad it is a good laugh" category where it is best watched with more than a few beers or if you are in a state like mine with legal recreational Mary Jane such as Maine where I live it is even funnier.
 
Windshadow said:
Right With you on this one the android girl also gave an amazing performance!

I think it was badly marketed
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Oh yes, she was lovely and nearly stole the entire film.

It's also one of the films I think Clooney is very good in. Usually I find him rather uneven.
 
Aha! I thought I was the only person ever to have seen A Bothersome Man. Very odd and very wonderful - in a bleak, enigmatic sort of way.

The Quiet Earth, Stalker, Black Orpheus, The Thief of Bagdad, Orphée, Beauty and the Beast and Alphaville are all listed in the 1001 Movies you Must See Before You Die books so aren't that underrated.

The Big Empty I will admit I had never heard of before, but between starting this post and finishing it I'd bought a DVD copy on eBay.
 
pogopossum said:
And thank you Owlcraft. Followed your link. As Windshadow commented in another context (paraphrase), the site is a rabbit hole of a depth that I can't afford to jump into. still have a non-streaming life. (but I would add, I may not be able to resist.)
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Thank you for the kind words. I hope that if you like the site, you might post a link to it on anyplace you post (site, blog, social media, whatever). Back in the day, when the site was fairly new--we're going back maybe two decades here--it was popular. A Google search on "science fiction & fantasy" (or vice-versa) usually turned it up in the top 10, typically around #8; today, it barely makes the top 100 (#82 for "science fiction & fantasy" as I type, and that's a big jump up from a few days ago, when it didn't show at all in the top 500). A reasonable number of reasonable people seemed to like it back in the day, and it would do my old heart good to have people aware of it again.

(I hope the mods don't think all this too pushy.)
 
www.imdb.com

Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (1970) ⭐ 6.4 | Comedy, Drama, Romance

1h 30m | PG
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (1970)
my take on the film is...... it's gentle and sweet It was the first film I recall seeing Gene Wilder (1933–2016) in afterward I attempted to see every film he was in..... I was seldom disapointed.
This the short synopsis from IMDB
In Dublin, a working class family has been unsuccessful in convincing their son to get a real job: the son prefers his job of scooping up horse's dung and selling it for flower gardens. An American exchange student almost runs him over and gets to know him. The dung man has ignored warnings from his family and suddenly the horses have been banned from Dublin. His new love is leaving for America and he must find a way to cope with the new reality.
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I don't know how the recent Apes films could be consider underrated. They are generally well-regarded by critics and have their fans.

I suppose it really depends upon what you mean by "underrated." Oftentimes it comes down to "a film that I like better than what I hear from most others."

I want to say Dark City, but it is something of a cult classic, even if it is less known than other "mind-bending" SF films.

Zardoz. I think its weirdness (ala RT's consensus) and very 70s zeitgeist qualities make it inaccessible to today's viewers, but it is a brilliant film, imo.

2012. Kind of silly, of course, but for disaster spectacle it is rather hard to beat. Meaning, if it is viewed as pure entertainment, it is a lot of fun.

Renegade/Blueberry. Got overall bad reviews and fans of the Mobius comic didn't like it, but I think it is rather misunderstood: it is really a film about psychological trauma and mystical awakening and quite powerful in enacting those themes.

Excalibur. Boorman's masterpiece amid a great string of films in the 70s and early 80s (Deliverance, Zardoz, Emerald Forest). Like some of his other films of that era, it is strongly mystical in nature, with esoteric and symbolic themes that are lost on most viewers. But even without that esoteric substrata, it is a beautifully crafted film with a densely mythic atmosphere.
 
The Man in the White Suit (1951)
www.imdb.com

The Man in the White Suit

Trailer for The Man in the White Suit
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com

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.
My next Film is truly not underrated it has a screenplay that was nominated for an academy award.
it is one of the great comedy films from England of the 1950s, but as it is in black and white many younger folks will not have heard of it or will pass it by as they never consider older B&W productions worth their time... though some do have an awakening to the format after seeing a film such as Young Frankenstein.

"Man in the White Suit" is perhaps, along with "Kind Hearts and Coronets," the pinnacle of the Ealing film. It's a very sophisticated and subtle comedy/farce that takes a dig at a number of the cultural institutions that characterize northern England. It's not so much a satire directed at capitalism but an opprobrium of the suspicious relationship between capital and labor and the broader unworkable relationship of commercial achievement with scientific progress. The success of the film resides in the subtlety with which these issues are explored and the even-handedness by which they are dealt with. At a more basic level, the film is an excellent example of a farce as frustration, misinterpretation, and exaggerated comedy are delivered with a breath-taking pace. Very well written, even better direction and uniformly spot-on performances make this one of the great British films of the 1950s.
 
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